It’s not often a pitcher throws a seven inning complete game and gives up just three hits, one walk and no earned runs, but takes a loss. Josh Malm was lights out from start to finish on Monday, but that wasn’t enough for Monticello as errors bit the Mustangs in the fifth and seventh inning to give Freedom three runs. And as good as Malm was, so too was Eagles starting pitcher Zach Newell. The lefty gave up four hits on the night, but issued a single walk and saw his middle infield and outfield play flawless baseball. That wound up being the difference in the Mustangs’ pitcher’s duel with Freedom advancing to the Region II quarterfinals, 3-0.
“It was two young pitchers going it at it,” said Eagles coach Jason Treon. “I didn’t like our approach at the plate, but you’ve got to tip your hat to Malm. In a game like this (where there’s little hitting) you’ve got to do the other two facets of the game really well. Today we played defense and pitched.”
Freedom led the first inning off with a single and a walk, but it would be quite some time before they would get a runner back in scoring position as Malm retired the next three batters to get out of the jam.
In the next inning, Malm hit a batter but then truly dialed in. The Monticello ace retired the next 11 batters in a row which put him into the fifth inning with two outs. It was then that Freedom caught its big break.
After Joey Pleasant reached first on a fielding error, he was able to steal second. Matt Malacane then drove in Pleasant when he reached base on an error to break the scoreless tie. Dylan teal was able to produce a bunt single to drive in Malacane to make it 2-0.
“It essentially became a safety squeeze for us,” Treon said of going after the insurance run. “Dylan got that down at the right downward angle and that let Malacane break from third.”
The error bug plagued Monticello in the next two innings as well, but a double play negated the one made in the sixth. But two errors sandwiched in between a single from Malacane in the seventh put Monticello in an even deeper hole, down three and with only three outs to make up the difference.
Newell didn’t mess around in the bottom of the seventh as he struck out two of the three batters he faced, picking up his fifth and final K with the game clinching out.
“He’s able to get his off speed stuff over the plate, so any time you can do that you can spot your fastball and pitch backwards a bit,” Treon said of Newell. “He was able to keep Monticello off balance that way.”
Tyler Moneymaker and Derek Knight are the only two seniors the Mustangs lose to graduation, and while Monticello coach Peter O’Malley wished his team could have played further, simply getting this young team through the Jefferson District into Region II play was the most important thing at the end of the day.
“I think we learned a lot here today as a young team,” O’Malley said. “You’re always trying to win. These Northern Virginia teams, you hear so much about them and they’re powerhouses. They come from great disctricts. I didn’t want to tell any of our players anything about Freedom because I wanted them to just play their game, let the chips fall where they may. I think we learned that Josh Malm can pitch with the best of them today.”
Malm finished with four strikeouts and only allowed three balls to be hit into the outfield — two were caught, the other fell for a single. Unfortunately for Monticello, five errors complicated matters.
“You’ve got to make the breaks, you can’t sit and wait for them to happen,” O’Malley said. “I think playoff inexperience showed a little bit for us because it looked like we were sitting back and hoping the ball wasn’t hit at us.”
Offensively Malm, Jhalil Mosley and Max Mann each went 1 for 3. Devin Dickerson was 1 for 2. Monticello saw its best scorings opportunities come in the first and fourth, putting a runner on third with two outs on both occasions. However, ground outs to shortstop and third ended the two respectively.
