Mustangs’ championship formula is a simple one, but difficult to achieve
The night before the Berks Baseball League championship game Gov. Mifflin’s players were focused on a rematch against Wilson’s Matt VanOstenbridge and how they could take a better approach against him after he shut them out 10 days earlier.
Mustangs coach Chris Hole had to pull them back and remind them how they had gotten to this point.
“Our bread and butter is pitching and defense,” he told them. “If you want to hold that trophy that’s what you’ve got to focus on. That’s the most important thing.”
The Mustangs have a strong and deep pitching staff and some of the best hitters in the league in Tyler Minick, Bryce Detwiler, Alexander Velez and Travis Jenkins.
Their strength – the thing that sets them apart from other good teams – is run prevention. There’s more to that than simply having a strong-armed pitcher on the mound.
It’s about the seven guys behind him and the guy catching him. It’s about shutting down the running game and catching the ball when it’s hit to you. It’s about throwing it to the right base after you catch it, hitting the cutoff man, not giving away free bases. It’s about taking the out when a team gives you one.
It’s about limiting an opponent to three outs per inning and not allowing a small rally to end up leaving a crooked number on the scoreboard.
“We were able to do that throughout this whole tournament,” Hole said after Mifflin defeated Wilson 6-3 Monday night at FirstEnergy Stadium for its second championship in three years and fourth in the last eight tournaments. “Tonight it served us well again.”
The Mustangs can throw all kinds of awesome stats at you. They batted .337 in the three-game BCIAA Tournament and averaged 9.0 runs.
Their most impressive number?
One.
That’s how many errors they committed in three playoff games; that’s how many unearned runs they allowed on the way to claiming their record 15th Berks championship.
Not many high school teams are fundamentally sound enough to commit only one error over 27 playoff innings.
Mifflin’s three opponents committed six errors over those games, leading to seven unearned runs.
This wasn’t just the Mustangs getting hot at the right time; they’ve done this all season. Entering the playoffs they had allowed an average of 2.10 runs per game; the next-lowest figure in the league was nearly double that.
The Mustangs committed 17 errors in 19 games – another extraordinary number at this level. Half the teams in the league committed twice that number; some had 50 or more errors.
Mifflin entered the postseason without two of its key run-preventers in place.
Velez, the Berks Pitcher of the Year in 2022, developed arm soreness in early April and was shut down as a pitcher. He was 3-0 with an 0.57 ERA at the time after going 8-0 last season.
Darien Troche, the everyday catcher the past two seasons, experienced arm pain just before the playoffs and hasn’t been behind the plate since. He’s restricted to DH duties for the rest of the season; Velez is now the regular first baseman.
“Not being able to really work with the team, it’s killing me,” said Troche, a senior and co-captain. “But when you’ve got guys who can fill it in like ‘Trav,’ that’s what picks up me.”
Travis Jenkins came through the Mifflin development pipeline as a catcher. When he got to high school last year Troche had that position secured, so Jenkins moved to the outfield and became a plus defender.
Since Troche went out Jenkins has filled in behind the plate and the Mustangs haven’t missed a beat.
They’ve kept winning even without Velez pitching. Detwiler and Ethan Grim, both sophomores, have been anchors on the mound, combining to go 13-3 with an ERA of about 2.50. Grim started and won two of the three playoff games, allowing one run nine innings.
“Travis comes in there and just does the job like he never left it,” said Troche. “He’s looking great. When you have a guy who can go out there like that, it gives you confidence in your team.”
The Mustangs have a bright future. Of the 10 starters in the lineup Monday just four are seniors: Minick, Velez, Troche and center fielder Owen Lehman. Detwiler, Grim, Jenkins and third baseman Matt Koehler are sophomores.
The Mustangs have a bright present, too. They head to the District 3 Class 5A Tournament Friday as one of the favorites in a stacked field that includes last year’s 5A district champ, Manheim Central, and last year’s 6A state champ, Warwick.
Mifflin will be the No. 2 seed (possibly opening against Exeter) and enters the tournament on a roll; it has won five straight and 9-of-10. It has gone 7-1 against Class 5A opponents this season; three of its four losses have come against 6A opponents.
The Mustangs are as strong as any team in the field, top to bottom, and capable of bringing home the program’s first District 3 championship.
“Our coaches did a great job (all season long) of preaching to us that we haven’t won a thing yet, which (was) so true,” said Troche. “We can celebrate this (championship), but we’ve got other things to work toward. We’ve got districts coming up, possibly states, that’s what we’ve got to (focus) on.”
