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Mooney’s Olesh goes distance in loss to St. Ed
STRUTHERS
Cardinal Mooney’s Brennan Olesh went the distance and gave up one earned run, but the Cardinals fell 4-1 to Lakewood St. Edward on Saturday in the opener of the 2017 Bob Cene Parl High School Baseball Tournament.
Olesh, who struck out five and walked two, was in a pitching duel with Northwestern-bound Quinn Lavelle, who struck out nine Cardinals and gave up three walks over six innings.
But Mooney’s defense allowed two unearned runs in the fourth inning to gave St. Edward its final margin of victory.
With St. Edward holding on to a 2-1 advantage through the top half of the fourth, the Eagles started the home portion of the inning by hitting a routine ground ball that went through the legs of Mooney’s third baseman.
Then with two outs, Olesh hit a batter before giving up a two-run triple off the end of the glove of Mooney’s right fielder, who almost came up with the ball after a diving effort.
Lavelle gave way to Jared Becker who closed out the game in the seventh when Bryce Richey smacked a deep fly out to center field with Mooney base runners on first and second.
“That Lavelle kid really pitched a phenomenal game,” said Mooney head coach Al Franceschelli. “We just couldn’t catch up with him. He threw a great changeup, he came side-arm a little bit and he gave us all kinds of different looks. He was probably the best pitcher we faced this year.”
But Franceschelli thought Olesh and his kids played well for the most part against the state perennial power.
“Our guy pitched a great game too,” he said. “But we made a couple of errors and I think we gave up one earned run and that wasn’t good. You can’t make mistakes against St. Ed’s — you’re going to eventually pay for it. But I was happy with the way our kids played, I just think their pitcher was the better guy today.”
St. Edward head coach Matt Rosinski echoed similar sentiments.
“Quinn was real good today.” Rosinski said. “He was very strong today, nine Ks, went six strong innings for us and put us in a spot to win.”
Rosinski praised Olesh, who scattered five hits.
“The lefty was real strong,” he said. “He kept us off-balance with a real good breaking ball, also throwing fast balls. I thought he competed real well, went the whole game for them. We couldn’t quite break it open there because of how much he competed. I thought he threw a great game.”
Mooney scored its lone run off Lavelle in the third when Jake Fonderlin led off with a single and eventually scored when Richey grounded out to the shortstop. Alex Wollet and Anthony Potesta also singled off of Lavelle, who gave up just three hits over six innings, and Gino Guerrieri singled off of Becker in the seventh.
Franceschelli thought Olesh, just a junior, really pitched well enough to win despite the lack of run support from the offense.
“For the quality of team that he played against I thought he did a phenomenal job,” he said. “He pitched, I think it was a five-hitter, and gave up three unearned runs. It wasn’t his fault we kind of gagged on him a little bit. But both pitchers were good.”
Mooney dipped to 2-4 with the loss.
“Losing the opener here almost puts pressure on us to win the next two if you want to be in that final game, and we do want to be there,” Franceschelli said. “I think we’re OK. We still got a lot of pitching left, we’re pretty deep this year, so we should be OK.”