Delco powerhouse hits the ground running in Carpenter Cup
PHILADELPHIA >> Don DiLoreto looked at the Delco lineup with an empathetic eye Tuesday.
The Harriton junior pitches for the Rams, but he’s on the Delco Carpenter Cup squad strictly as an outfielder. When he considered the lineup of league rivals assembled in South Philly, a thought went out to the Philadelphia Public League pitching staff.
“Whenever I face any of these guys, it’s just so hard,” he said. “Every team in the Central League has their powerhouses, and it seems like we’re all a bunch of well-rounded hitters.”
The Delco hitters strafed Pub pitching for 16 hits in a 15-1 win in the first round of the 31st annual Carpenter Cup at Richie Ashburn Field at FDR Park.
For as much as nine Pub errors contributed to nine unearned runs, the Delco bats never relented, powering their way to a place in Friday’s quarterfinals. That game at 12:30 p.m. will be against the winner of the Inter-Ac/Independents and Delaware North, to be played at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Delco scored in every inning save for the second, chipping out ones and twos until the final tally was a monstrously crooked number.
The first platoon, which logged the game’s first five innings, bequeathed a 6-1 lead. The second group, led by DiLoreto, tacked on the other nine, including seven combined in the eighth and ninth against a flagging Pub side.
DiLoreto shone, going 3 for 3, a homer shy of the cycle with three RBIs and two runs scored. Each time he drove in Haverford’s Dylan Resnick, who went 2 for 3, one of several bouts of instant chemistry between new teammates that emerged from the first pitch.
Don DiLoreto singles home Nick Cerelli. 9-1 Delco. pic.twitter.com/4uq94bqorz
— Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) June 14, 2016
Some of the connections were readymade, including four members of Marple Newtown’s team that a day earlier had been eliminated from the PIAA Class AAAA semis who drew starts. Freshman Alden Mathes went 2 for 3 in the leadoff spot and scored twice, driven home by an RBI triple supplied by fellow Tiger Ricky Collings two batters into the game. Scott Hahn added two hits, as Delco’s most potent lineup during the season passed on its prowess to the all-star squad.
“We all kind of know each other, how the league is going,” Hahn said. “We pretty much got the best players in the Central League to form a team. And our lineup’s just incredible.”
.@ssdcougars‘ Brandon DiChiacchio hits an RBI single to center. 12-1 Delco. pic.twitter.com/zERdQza7mE
— Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) June 14, 2016
Delco didn’t just bash its way to the quarters. Except for a lackadaisical bottom of the ninth, they committed just one error, and even in that sloppy final frame, Strath Haven’s Will Carey worked out of trouble without surrendering a run.
Jared Morris set the tone on the mound, the Springfield junior throwing three scoreless innings and striking out four. He worked around two hits in the second inning and a leadoff double by Prep Charter’s Brian Reynolds in the third.
“If you go out there and throw well, it picks your team up and makes them want to hit for you,” Morris said. “It gets the energy on your side and keeps the energy from their side.”
Harriton’s Jonah Frankel allowed the only run in the fourth when Kyle Rosenberg of Central tripled and Frankford’s Joshua Pagan drove him home. But Rosenberg’s hit was the Pub’s last until the eighth. Haverford’s Cole Humes, Conestoga’s Angus Mayock and the Haven duo of David Moore and Carey each worked clean innings, limiting the Pub to six hits.
And those Delco bats refused to stop churning out base knocks, easing the burden on the arms.
“It’s so relieving knowing that you don’t have to go out there and strike everybody out,” Morris said. “Even if you let up one, two, three runs, you know you’re going to get support the next inning.”
Penncrest designated hitter Sam Freedman rapped an RBI single in the third, as did Springfield’s Nick Gorman in the fourth. Springfield’s Greg Tamaccio scored on a wild pitch in the seventh, walked with the bases loaded in the eighth to force home a run and singled home another in the ninth.
DiLoreto added RBI base knocks in the each of the final three innings, punctuated by a triple that rolled to the centerfield wall in the ninth before he scampered home on a passed ball.
The opening foray has Delco hoping it can return to the semis at Citizens Bank Park for an unprecedented third straight season. And the offense is providing a reason to believe.
“There’s a lot of standouts here, but I think we did a great job today,” DiLoreto said. “We’re just going to keep on doing our jobs, we’re going to keep producing and see how far it takes us.”
