St. James pushed the No. 1 team in Class 4A in the state to the brink of elimination
The No. 1 baseball team in Class 4A was too much for the second-ranked squad.
St. James fell 6-1 at Chapin in the deciding game of the Lower State championship Wednesday night, ending the Sharks' season one victory shy of the state title series.
Coach Robbie Centracchio’s team forced the winner-take-all Game 2 with a 3-2 win earlier in the night. However, that ultimately equated to St. James’ final win of the 2018 season and the last high school game for 10 seniors, most of whom also played for the state championship in 2016.
“Right now, I’m thinking about how hard it’s going to be not to put their name in the lineup to give us a chance to win,” Centracchio said by phone after the game. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like that. With this group, I felt like we had a chance to win every single night. That’s pretty rare in this day and age.”
Chapin and St. James were ranked one-two in the final regular-season South Carolina Baseball Coaches Association Class 4A poll, and most believed they were on a collision course to see who would make the state championship series. Neither team lost a game in their respective district playoff brackets, and their only losses of the playoffs came against each other.
Chapin sent St. James to the loser’s bracket with a 4-3 victory Saturday in Murrells Inlet. The Sharks, after beating Lugoff-Elgin Monday to set up the rematch with the Eagles, returned the favor in Game 1 Wednesday.
In the most important of the three meetings, though, Chapin got the breaks it needed to advance. The Eagles pushed three runs across in the top of the sixth inning after two hits to right field were misplayed.
“We didn’t play very good defense in the second game,” Centracchio said. “We get into that [second] game to play for a state championship - we had nerves and tired bodies.
Chapin added two more in the top of the seventh, although that was insurance it didn’t need. St. James’ lone offense of the game was a Trystan Freeman solo home run in the fourth inning off Eagles’ ace William Privette.
In game one, Chapin went up 2-1 in the bottom of the second. However, the Sharks tied it in the top of the third and then went up on a Jacob English sacrifice squeeze in the next frame to end the scoring. Meanwhile, senior Anthony Peck threw a complete game.
Peck then pitched the first 1 2/3 innings of the second game before he reached his pitch maximum. Freshman Ethan Salak took over and pitched deep into the game until Chapin’s bats came alive and ended St. James’ year.
“I thought he pitched a hell of a game,” Centracchio said. “We just didn’t make the plays behind him.”
St. James, the final team from Horry County alive in the state baseball playoffs, won 20 games for the sixth time in school history and finished the season 27-6. The Sharks won the Region VII-4A title to earn a No. 1 seed in the state playoffs and then took advantage en route to a three-game sweep through the District VII-4A postseason bracket.
This story was originally published May 9, 2018 at 11:47 PM with the headline "St. James pushed the No. 1 team in Class 4A in the state to the brink of elimination."