Holland Shuts Down Berlin as Erial Advances

second round game against Berlin Borough on Sunday represented a big leap in the double-elimination tournament. The winner would be just two wins away from winning the Section 4 title. By contrast, the loser would need to battle through the loser's bracket and win five games.

To combat this, Erial put their ace starting pitcher on the mound, needing him to come through with a good start. Holland didn't just pitch a good game, he pitched the best game of his season.

Holland retired the first 10 hitters he faced and held Berlin to four hits, one walk and three runs in Erial's 11-4 victory on Sunday at Franklin Township Little League.

Berlin entered the game as a team known for their offense. They scored double digit runs in all but one of their district tournament games en route to the District 21 championship. However, the hitters struggled with pitch recognition as Holland mixed up his fastball and curveball and had great command of both.

“He was throwing his curveball for strikes and when he wasn't, [Berlin] was still biting on it,” said Erial manager Carl Foltz.

Holland retired Berlin's lineup in order through the third inning. In those nine outs, five were strikeouts, two were pop outs on the infield, one was a ground out and one was a deep fly ball hit by Berlin right fielder Andrew Thomas. In those five strikeouts, three hitters went down looking, all on pitches on the outside corner. Holland would finish the game with nine strikeouts.

“We were getting called out on some outside pitches,” said Foltz, “so we tried to pick on the outside corner a little bit.”

It was critical for Holland to keep the ball on the infield as the game took place on a field with short fences. Puddles on the main field at Franklin Township forced the teams to play on a field where the fences were only about 180 feet. That is about 20 feet shorter then most Little League fields, which have 200 foot fences. However, Holland prevented Berlin from getting the ball into the outfield, keeping his pitches around the knees.

“This team's a good hitting team, I give them a lot of credit,” said Holland. “Playing on a smaller field was tough, but the defense did help me out a lot.”

The field size forced Erial to adjust their usual baserunning strategy. Erial is a team that likes to take two bases when possible, but some of their chances were cut down on Sunday by the short fences.

“I told the guys to be careful on balls hit past the outfielders and over the outfielders,” said Foltz. “We like to be aggressive on the basepaths, but with the short outfield fence obviously you can't do that. So we just tried to hit the ball hard.”

Erial would use their power to take advantage of the smaller field, hitting three home runs in the game. The first came from catcher Jake Vespa, who hit a line drive home run right over the left field fence with two outs in the first inning to get Erial on the board with a 1-0 lead.

Up 2-0 in the third inning, Holland helped himself out with a two-run home run to start the third inning, extending Erial's lead to 4-0.

Erial pulled away in the latter innings, putting up seven runs in the final three innings after chasing Berlin starting pitcher Spencer Perez out of the game. Back-to-back doubles by left fielder and second baseman helped account for three runs in the fourth inning for Erial.

Then, in the fifth, a leadoff home run by first baseman and another set of back-to-back doubles by Sarne and Holland gave Erial a 9-3 lead. They would tack on two more in the sixth inning to put up double digit runs for the fifth consecutive game.

Erial now stands as one of two remaining undefeated teams in the Section 4 tournament, the same spot they were in during the District 14 tournament. They will play again on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Haddonfield Little League. Their opponent will be the winner of Sunday's other winner's bracket game between District 13 champion Cherry Hill Atlantic and District 15 champion West Deptford. The winner of Wednesday's game will advance to the Section 4 championship game next Sunday at Gloucester Little League.

                   1  2  3  4  5  6      R   H  E
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Erial             1  1  2  3  2  2     11 14  1
Berlin           0  0  0  3  0  1       4  4  0
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W: Adam Holland

L: Spencer Perez

2B: Erial: Cross Sarne 2, Holland, Sean Sigall ; Berlin: Jared Brey

HR: Erial: Holland, Jake Vespa, Jason Reynolds