Parkland High School Baseball

The Parkland Trojans advanced to the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference championship game with a dominant 8-0 victory in their semi-final matchup against Easton at Hackett Park.  Senior right-hander Rhett Jacoby pitched a complete game, 2-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts.  Jacoby was dominant throughout the game.  He struck out the side in order in the opening inning, and Jacoby proceeded to retire the first 14 Easton batters of the game in a row.  Jacoby was perfect through 4 and 2/3 innings before Easton got their first base hit of the game with two outs in the 5th inning.  Jacoby also did not walk a batter.

After going scoreless in the first two innings of the game, the Parkland bats came alive in the bottom of the 3rd inning.  The Trojans sent 11 batters to the plate and by the time the 3rd inning was over they Trojans had scored 7 runs on 7 hits in the inning.  Jeff Strisovsky (1-4, R) got the rally started wihth a one-out single.  Justin Afflerbach (2-3, 2R) followed with a single to put runners on first and second.  Chris Rabasco (3-3, R, RBI) then singled to score Strisovksy for the first run of the game  and a 1-0 Parkland lead.  Afflerbach then scored when Tyler Bruno (0-3, R, RBI) reached base on error and Evan McAndrew (0-2, sac fly, 2 RBI) followed with the RBI sacrifice fly to put the Trojans up 3-0.  Cullan Wadsworth (1-3, R, RBI) singled to plate Bruno, Austin Mueller (1-3, R) singled on a ground ball up the middle, and Rhett Jacoby (1-2, BB, RBI) singled to score Wadsworth.  Andrew Roth (1-3, RBI) then beat out an infield single for an RBI that scored Mueller and a throwing error on the play allowed courtesy runner EJ Brandt to score for a 7-0 Trojan lead.

After Jacoby made quick work of the Rovers in the top of the 4th with a 1-2-3 inning on 6 pitches, Parkland added another run in the bottom half of the inning.  Afflerbach reached base on an error, Rabasco singled for his third hit of the game and after a wild pitch put runners on second and third, McAndrew hit an RBI ground out to score Afflerbach. 

With the 8-0 lead, Jacoby continued to cruise through the Easton lineup.  After allowing a base hit on a ground ball that hit the third base bag in the 6th inning, Jacoby retired the remaining batters in order to put an exclamation point on his impressive performance.