Millburn Baseball Win Streak Snapped

The Millburn boys baseball team saw its 10-game winning streak snapped at home on Tuesday afternoon against the Seton Hall Prep Pirates, 6-0. The West Orange school wasted no time, putting up all six runs in the first three innings and then rode a great pitching performance by Stephen Silvestri, who tossed six shutout innings.

After scoring a pair of runs in the top of the first behind RBI from Tom Mahala and Stephan Halibej, the visitors kept the pressure on in the second inning. Mark Mari led off for the Pirates with a double to centerfield and was knocked in by Rob Fonseca’s RBI triple. Tim Hoehn put the Pirates up 4-0 with a sacrifice fly, scoring Fonseca and an RBI single by John Norwood blooped into left-center put Millburn behind by five.

The Pirates tacked on their final run in the next inning, on a sac fly by Shane Nolan, scoring Halibej, who led off the inning with a single.

“Obviously we’re disappointed,” said Millburn head coach Brian Chapman. “I don’t know that we played our best baseball game today. I don’t think we had to have a great game to get a win today. I think we came out, we were a little unsettled. Our nerves, or whatever it was, kind of manifested itself in them scoring some early runs.”

Millburn pitcher Danny Frischman did a good job shutting down the Pirates over his final two innings of work, allowing two base runners while striking out two. Corey Abrams finished off the game for Millburn and allowed two hits.

“I think Danny was unsettled a little bit early, he made some poor pitches in the first couple of innings, but from the third inning on, he was his old self,” Chapman said. “He threw strikes, he threw all of his pitches for strikes, he kept them off balance. He gave us a chance to make some plays behind him, but the problem was that by that time we were in a 6-0 hole against a very good pitcher.”

Silvestri was effective enough against the Millers, striking out five, walking five and giving up three hits in six innings. Millburn had plenty of base runners, but weren’t able to come up with any hits with runners on base, going 0 for 13 in those situations on Tuesday.

“When you’re playing a good team, it’s difficult to come back from a 5-0 hole like that, especially with their guy on the mound,” Chapman said. “This kid seems to pitch all of their big games ,and I don’t think he had his best stuff on the mound today but he did what he had to do to win the game.”

Millburn’s best chance to get back into the game came in the bottom of the fifth, where Will Fitzgerald reached on a scalding single, Frischman was hit by a pitch and Anthony Del Greco walked on four pitches to load the bags. But Millburn was unable to connect with two outs and left the bases loaded.

“I thought we had some good at bats, we had some hard hit balls that didn’t find holes,” Chapman said. “They defended very well. All credit to their pitcher and their team, they played very well.”

The loss dropped Millburn to 10-3 overall, which means they are still in good shape to contend for the Super Essex Conference American Division title. West Orange currently sits atop the division with just one loss, but Millburn still has two games against the Mountaineers, so they still control their own destiny in terms of having a chance to win the division. Seton Hall Prep, which like Millburn, has three division losses, improved to 7-3.

Millburn gets right back to work with a road game against Nutley on Wednesday, where the Millers will look to avenge their opening day loss.