District Silver for Mounts

FREDERICKSBURG — It’s hard to imagine a closer baseball game than Manheim Central’s 2-1 defeat of Ephrata at Wenger Field on Thursday for the District Three Class 5A championship.

The Barons (21-2) got superb pitching from Connor Rohrer and, in late relief, Jared Murray. They strung together four hits in the fifth inning for a two-run rally and created the final margin.

They won a one-run game for the fourth straight time in the district playoffs, and stamped themselves as worthy successors to last year’s Central squad, which did not win a district title but reached the state semifinals.

“I’ve said all along that I thought this offense was deeper than last year’s,’’ Central coach Jason Thompson said. “Last year’s group had guts, 100%. But these guys – four one-run wins in this district tournament – these guys have got some serious grit, too.’’

So do the Mounts, whose pitcher, Brody Martin, came up with the same kind of crafty and commanding effort that beat powerful 6A district champ Warwick in the Lancaster-Lebanon League playoffs, and whose defense was not just immaculate but, at times, especially in the outfield, better than that.

“We couldn’t have gotten any closer,’’ Ephrata coach Adrian Shelley said.

That was true in many ways, but Shelley meant closer to the plate, which was a theme. A fascinating game within this game was waged over a tiny piece of real estate – a matter of an inch or three or four – on the outside corner of the plate.

By the bottom of the first inning, which ended with Thompson in heated discourse with the plate umpire, it was clear that the game’s scaffold, the strike zone, was a wide one, with an especially generous outside corner to right-handed hitters.

As the game wore on, hitters, especially the righties, crowded the plate more and more, the better to reach that corner. The respective (and both excellent) catchers, Central’s Mason Weaver and Ephrata’s Coy Schwenger, increasingly set up shop out on the edge. Rohrer and Martin increasingly tried to define and paint that edge, and often succeeded.

“It was expanded,’’ Thompson said. “That’s high school baseball in general, though. Hitters crowd the plate because pitchers are afraid to come in and hit somebody.’’

“We were on top of it,’’ Shelley said. “He (the plate ump) was consistent, for the most part. If he’s going to call it, hats off to them for taking advantage of it.’’

There were 12 called third strikes, seven against Ephrata. There were three hit batters, all righties.

Martin, a craftsman at work, nursed a 1-0 lead into the fifth. Then the Barons got a single to left by nine-hole hitter Collin Neiles, followed by a sharp single up the middle by Kye Watson and a bunt single by Weaver.

Bases loaded, nobody out. Brady Harbach then delivered a sac fly to center, scoring courtesy runner Ty Clugston. Finally, Nolan Book stroked one of those away, on-the-edge pitches to right-center, scoring Watson.

“That’s been our nemesis, not this year but in years past, being able to hit that outside pitch to right field,’’ Thompson said.

“We work on that, and these guys listen and they execute.’’

Rohrer’s been there before. He came in 6-0, and threw gems in last year’s L-L championship game and state quarterfinal. With two on and one out in the sixth, he delivered two strikeouts.

Ephrata got the leadoff man on in the seventh, but Roher got his ninth whiff and included a bouncer back to the mound.

That put him up against the pitch limit. Enter Murray, also 6-0 and with two no-hitters and a 1.65 ERA. He issued one walk and then got the final out, yet another called strikeout, on, get this, an inside fastball.

“We went inside because we figured they weren’t going to swing,’’ Weaver said. “Just go inside and frame it.’’

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