Ryan Pitts came through with seven innings of one-run ball and added three bunts and two RBIs to force Game Three.
After Tuesday night's Game One loss to Birches in the NorCo Legion championship series, Nazareth manager Jason Brown surveyed his team to see who might be able to pitch in Wednesday's Game Two.
The options, more or less, were anybody who had a fresh arm, with experience not necessarily a requirement. Brown had thrown his top pitchers to win the semifinal series and guarantee a Region 2 tournament berth. Whatever happened from there was gravy.
Ryan Pitts' arm was relatively fresh, and he did have some experience -- in the form of three or four relief appearances this season, one of them coming in the eighth inning of Tuesday's loss.
The 15-year old volunteered to throw Wednesday -- "Of course I did," he said -- and was probably done a favor by Brown by not learning until a few hours before first pitch that he would get the ball. If he had known Tuesday night, Pitts would have had roughly 20 hours to think about a strong Birches lineup and everything that could go wrong.
Instead, everything went right.
Pitts came through in the clutch with seven innings of painting the corners, allowing just six hits and striking out six. He also laid down three perfect bunts, one on a squeeze, as Nazareth ran past Birches 13-1 at Saylorsburg Playground to force a decisive Game Three.
"I just tried not to think about it because I know they tower over me," Pitts grinned. "I knew I couldn't overpower them at all, I was just trying to throw it over the plate and hope my teammates would make the plays behind me, and they did."
The NorCo championship will be decided 5:30 p.m. Thursday night back at Nazareth Boro Park.
Young gun delivers for Nazareth in Game 1 loss
As was the case on Tuesday night, Brown was hoping to get perhaps three innings from his freshman starter. And just like Tyler Hartranft did Tuesday, Pitts delivered much more than that.
"Honestly, we came here tonight hoping he was going to get us one time through the lineup," Brown said. "We said, 'If you can get us three innings and keep us close, we'll go from there.'
"Great performance from him. The future is looking good around here if you got two 15-year-olds that can throw back-to-back games like that, at this level, at this time of the year."
Veteran catcher Jake Trenberth helped even out the battery. While Pitts threw this spring on Nazareth's JV squad and had most of his Legion experience at shortstop, Trenberth brought plenty of varsity and Legion experience behind the plate.
Trenberth had some words of wisdom for Pitts, but gave his pitcher all the credit.
"I just said to him, 'Go out there and have fun. You throw your game. You're not going to overpower them with anything. They have three or four college freshmen in their lineup. They're going to hit the ball, they're going to hit it hard. Just make sure you get productive outs and keep the ball down,'" Trenberth said. "He did that and threw a great game.
"He was hitting the spots. His curveballs were low and outside, he was spotting inside fastball, outside fastball, high fastball if he needed to. He was just doing everything correct."
Pitts added a pair of RBIs at the plate. His first of three bunts came in the in the third inning, and it forced an error that allowed Nazareth to take a 2-1 lead it would never relinquish.
The second bunt sparked a four-run fifth inning, as Pitts executed the textbook squeeze bunt for the 3-1 lead and even reached on it for a single.
"He's an excellent bunter," Brown said.
How a roll of the dice paid off for Nazareth in semis
From there, the Nazareth offense exploded for a total of 11 runs over the final three innings. Every batter in the starting lineup scored at least one run (Noah McMullen scored three) except for Cam Farmer, who drove in two runs.
That six of the runs came against Birches' hard-throwing lefty Nick Domenici, who just finished his freshman year pitching at Penn State-Harrisburg, made it all the more impressive.
"We kind of geared up for that in (batting practice) today," Brown said. "I threw as hard as I possibly could, which isn't that hard anymore."
No. 9 batter Vinny Spinelli went 2-for-2 with two walks, two runs and an RBI while Trenberth, Kevin Ryan and Cade Stoneback each added a hit, a run and an RBI.
Just 24 hours removed from a game where Nazareth was ruing its missed chances, it nailed almost every one Wednesday night.
"That's what's great about playoff baseball: you never know what's going to happen from day to day," Brown said. "Yesterday missed opportunities, today everything just clicked. Every little thing worked. You have to have things like that happen in playoffs. That's what makes the playoffs magical."
Now, in a series that Brown said Monday night his team didn't have much of a chance at winning, Nazareth will play for a title Thursday night. And with a title on the line, the pitching situation goes from a volunteer basis to something more select -- though Brown declined to name a starter Wednesday night.
"It kind of changes a little bit now," he said. "Because now we have a couple guys with a little bit of rest under their belt, so we actually have some options open up more so than we did tonight at the park, when it was literally, 'Hey, if Pittsy gives us three innings, who wants to throw the next inning?'"
Except Pitts did more than that. The rookie threw the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh and sent Nazareth into a winner-take-all championship game.
Nazareth -- 011 041 6 -- 13 8 3
Birches -- 010 000 0 -- 1 6 4
2B -- Kevin Ryan (N); Luke Hohenstein, Marshall Hanyon (B). RBI -- Ryan Pitts 2, Cam Farmer 2, Jake Trenberth, Cade Stoneback, Kevin Ryan, Kevin Wagner, Vinny Spinelli, Noah McMullen (N); Hanyon (B).
Pitts and Trenberth; Nick Domenici, Luc Cibischino (5), Matt Konopke (7) and Hanyon. L -- Domenici. SO-BB -- Pitts 6-3; Domenici 3-4, Cibischino 1-4, Konopke 0-3.
Greg Joyce may be reached at gjoyce@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @GJoyce9. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.
