Herkimer College advances to championship round at NJCAA baseball World Series tournament

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — The last team into the NJCAA’s World Series will be one of the teams on the field when the Division III national champion is crowned this week.

With a 9-3 victory over Dallas College-Eastfield on Memorial Day, the Herkimer College Generals earned the first spot in championship round play starting Wednesday evening at Pioneer Park.

“It’s an exciting moment for a lot of people who have been tied to this program over the last 16 years,” said Herkimer coach Jason Rathbun, who took the Generals to the national tournament for the first time in 2006.

“It’s cool to see so many people following us,” he added, “and all the support we’re getting.”

The Generals, the only at-large team and the sixth seed at the eight-team double-elimination tournament, learned they were in when the bracket was released May 24 and departed for Tennessee the next day. After losing the first and final games of the Region III Final Four they hosted in Little Falls the previous weekend, the Generals (40-7) have won all three of their games in Greeneville and need just one more.

With a loss Wednesday, Herkimer would get a second crack at the championship the following day. The Generals’ opponent, be it Eastfield (46-11-1), Minnesota’s St. Cloud Technical and Community College (26-12) or Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute (48-8), the No. 1 seed from North Carolina, would need to beat Herkimer twice to earn the title.

“I think (the day off) is a good thing,” Rathbun said. “After playing three games in three days and leaving it all out there, a recovery day is a good thing.”

The other finalist was to be sorted out Tuesday. Wednesday’s game is scheduled for a 7 p.m. start. If necessary, a second game would be played at 7 p.m. Thursday. There is no mercy rule for the championship round.

“We’ll try to get a lead and use Greg (Farone) out of the bullpen,” Rathbun said of plans for Wednesday which include starting freshman Jake Lombardi. “I think (Ryan) Packard – and obviously (Joel) Hayer –  would be the only guys who wouldn’t be available, and I don’t know if Greg could go seven (innings) again, but he should have five.

“If something goes bad in the first three innings, we still have Greg and Pack for Thursday.”

Farone, Packard and Hayer started the first three tournament games for Herkimer, and Ethan Patch finished two of them.

Monday’s win gave Herkimer 40 for the third time under coach Jason Rathbun. The Generals won 41 games in 2014 and set a program record with 48 the following year.

Herkimer’s athletic department has won 63 national championships, and baseball would be the seventh team champion for the school, which owns titles in softball, field hockey, women’s track and field, and men’s basketball, soccer and lacrosse. The softball team was beaten at its national tournament last week and Avion Harris, a freshman from Niagara Falls, won the 1,500-meter run at track and field’s national championship in Troy earlier this month.

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Herkimer 9, Dallas-Eastfield 3

Hayner, a freshman, went eight innings in his longest outing as a General and limited Eastfield, the No, 5 seed, to three unearned runs on four hits before left-hander Ethan Patched closed out Monday’s semifinal win.

Playing as the away team, Herkimer took a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning and never trailed. Sal Carricato drove in the first run with a double and two more scored when Ty Gallagher singled.

Leading 4-1, Herkimer tacked on two runs in the fifth inning and one in the sixth to support Hayner, who struck out four batters and walked two. He pitched 5 1/3 innings in his longest college outing one week earlier at the regional tournament.

Kyle Caccamise, Ethan Duda and Trey Miller each had three of 17 Herkimer hits, Carricato scored three times, and Gallagher drove in three runs.

Herkimer 9, Oakton CC 8

Sunday’s 9-8 win over No. 7 Oakton Community College was the highest drama of the weekend for Herkimer. The Generals led 5-0 through five innings and 8-5 after seven.

Oakton’s Owls scored in each of the final four innings and pulled even at 8 with a run in the top of the ninth, when pinch runner Connor Thiessen scored on Brendan Holloway’s fly ball to right field. First baseman Carricato cut the throw from Mike Gunning and threw to third in time to retire Masen Beatty for the final out of the inning.

Gunning walked with one out in the bottom of the ninth and advanced on a wild pitch. The Owls opted to walk Gallagher with two outs before Duda singled Gunning home with the winning run.

Duda had two hits, two runs and two RBI, and Caccamise had two hits and drove in two runs. Gallagher had homered earlier in the game.

Freshman right-hander Packard shut out Oakton through the first five innings before running into trouble in the sixth. Jake Lombardi pitched the eighth inning, and Ethan Patch got the final three outs after inheriting two runners in the ninth.

Herkimer 10, Northern Essex CC 0

Herkimer had been one of two teams to beat No. 3 Northern Essex Community College during the regular season, and then Knights entered the tournament with a 33-game winning streak.

Farone and the Herkimer hitters put an end to that streak in a Saturday game stopped after seven innings under the NJCAA mercy rule.

Farone was dominant in what had a chance to be his final start for Herkimer. He walked two batters in the first inning and held the Knights hitless until the fourth when Nicholas White, who had drawn the first walk with two outs in the first, singled leading off.

Farone walked the next batter, then got a double play ball and a strikeout, the first of four in a row as he struck out the side for the second time in the fifth. Richie Williams led off the sixth with a single, and he was erased on another double play as Farone finished with 15 strikeouts, the third time he has reached that total this season while leading the nation with 129 in 54 innings.

The Herkimer bats came alive early, scoring six runs in the second inning and three in the third. The Generals scored their first three runs on two errors and a wild pitch before Carricato delivered a two-run single with the bases loaded; another error allowed the third runner to score on Carricato’s hit.

Caccamise and Gunning each drove in a run in the third inning, and Chance Checca homered leading off the seventh.

Caccamise had three of Herkimer’s 11 hits and scored two runs. Miller walked and scored twice, and Checca, Gunning and Gallagher each had two hits.

Herkimer had scored a total of two runs in its first two games of regional Final Four play the previous weekend.

Jon Rathbun is a sportswriter for the Times Telegram. Email Jon at sports@timestelegram.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Telegram: Herkimer College advances to NJCAA baseball championship