East Meadow pulls away from Mepham

A sweep in the final three-game series of the regular season vaulted East Meadow (12-7-1 overall) into the No. 5 seed in the Nassau County Class AA baseball playoffs, and the Jets extended that winning streak to four games with a 10-3 home win over No. 12 Mepham (6-13) in the first round last Monday.

Overcoming a shaky start, senior pitcher Matt Castaneda picked up a head of steam by the middle innings and went the distance, allowing just one earned run on four hits and three walks with four strikeouts.

“Matt battled and settled in,” East Meadow coach Ken Sicoli said. “He looked shaky early and kept his curveball up, but he did what he had to do. He looked much better after the fourth.”

Castaneda sent the Pirates down in order to close out the game on a pair of fly outs to Nick LoCascio in right field sandwiched around a strikeout.

East Meadow advanced to the quarterfinal round of the playoffs against No. 4 Calhoun in a best-of-three series.

Staked to a three-run lead in the bottom of the first thanks to a two-run single by junior Kyle Aberasturi and a run scored by senior Robbie Healy on a passed ball, Castaneda and the Jets gave back two on a pair of errors in the third. Seniors John Frisolone and junior Shane Agostino each scored on defensive miscues, and halfway through the game, the Pirates were still hanging around. Senior Dylan Gordon scored on an error in the fifth.

“I felt we were exactly where we wanted to be, a one-run game in the [fourth],” Mepham coach Bill Murphy said. “But they got the timely hit with the bases loaded and cracked it open.”

In the bottom of the fourth, junior Rich Renkl’s single plated juniors LoCascio and Robbie Bergmann with Aberasturi later scoring on another passed ball. Senior first baseman Ben Wright plated Bergmann and Aberasturi in the fifth with a double, though the Pirates managed to avoid allowing any truly big innings, as the Jets left a total of 13 runners on base in the game.

“We managed to tack some on and get it up to 10 [runs] but there were no huge innings,” Sicoli said. “When it looked [like that might happen], it didn’t [pan out].”