Concord pulls a stunner, knocks Piedmont Pride out of SCBL playoffs

With a rueful smile, Piedmont Pride coach Joe Hudak told a reporter after his team’s 6-4 loss to the Concord Weavers, “I was prophetic.”

The Pride, which finished 32-6 to win the Southern Collegiate Baseball League regular season title during its first summer in existence, was wary of facing the Weavers, who finished in last place in the SCBL with a 9-31 record. The Pride got a first round bye but the second round was just one game, not the usual best-of three or five-game series.

That made Hudak nervous. And justifiably so.

“That’s one of the great beauties of this game,” said Hudak, “that on any given day the record doesn’t matter. And you have to give them credit, they played well. They got some key hits when they needed them.”

Concord smashed out 15 hits and held the Pride’s powerful lineup to just seven hits. The visiting Weavers did commit four errors and allowed the Rock Hill-based Pride to load the bases in the first and eighth innings, but they always seemed to come through with a crucial play to escape trouble.

“We had chances,” Hudak said. “They made their breaks. They made the hits, they made the pitches when they needed to, and congratulations to them.”

The Pride never really got rolling offensively. They created base-runners with the help of Concord’s six walks and four errors. But Hudak’s club stranded 13 runners and was left grasping for the big hit on multiple occasions. A one-game playoff presented a huge opportunity for Concord and Brandon Taylor’s Weavers took advantage.

“As soon as we start Game 1 of the playoffs, it’s a brand new season,” said Taylor, whose team lost all of the ENTER games it played against the Pride in the regular season. “I told them, ‘as long as we come together we can beat anybody, and as long as our pitching is throwing strikes and we’re playing good defense, we’d have a chance to beat these guys.’”

The two sides were tied 2 all headed to the seventh when Concord snatched the lead with four runs in the frame. Eric Gilbert led off with a double and the hits kept flowing off the Weaver bats. Hunter Jones followed with an RBI double that scored Gilbert, before lefty Brett Gemmell launched a Zack Kamerman pitch over the rightfield wall to make it 5-2. An error kept the inning going and the Weavers grabbed one more on Chris Wright’s RBI double.

That inning certainly got the regular season champs’ attention, and they responded with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the seventh. Joey Pena was hit in the right thigh with a pitch, Jake Barbee reached when the Concord left fielder dropped a fly ball and Michael Yoder singled to load the bases with no outs. Designated hitter Andrew Bullock was plunked by a pitch to force a run home, before Andy Santana grounded into a double play that still scored a run.

The Pride had its best shot to claim the lead in the bottom of the eighth with the bases loaded

“I knew we couldn’t let them back in it at that point,” said Taylor. “One through nine over there can swing the bats, and our reliever was getting tired, I knew he was losing it.”

Taylor turned to his bullpen and Josh Bottenfield. The side-arming right-hander got Yoder to ground to third and the force out was made at second ending the frame.

The two-run deficit was as close as the Pride would get. The loss was a disappointing punctuation to an excellent regular season, but it didn’t dampen the overall success of the organization’s first season.

“I told the guys afterward, I’m so proud of them,” Hudak said. “I mean 32-6, that’s something to be proud of for sure. But the friendships they made; these guys are really, really close. And we were able to give back to the community. So, it was a great summer in every way possible, except for the last game.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2015 at 12:19 AM with the headline "Concord pulls a stunner, knocks Piedmont Pride out of SCBL playoffs."