Thayres' Towering Homer Highlights Eagles' Playoff Win

There’s an old adage applied often in sports, as well as life:

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”

The baseball team showed Friday that sometimes it is about how you start.

Brandon Thayres hit a towering two-run homerun as part of a four-run first inning that propelled the No. 10 seeded Eagles to an 8-5 win over No. 2 Delran in the second round of the NJSIAA South Jersey Group II playoffs.

West Deptford will face No. 11 Point Pleasant Boro on Tuesday.

“The first inning, we needed it,” Thayers said. “You have to come out strong, and to put up a four spot like that, you take the momentum.”

Senior Tony Urban brought the first two runs home with double that plated Tim Krott and Jason Fox. One batter later, Thayres—a catcher—launched a homer well over the left field fence and into the trees beyond.

“That was one of those balls where you know it is gone right off the bat,” Thayres said. “It was a hard hit. It just felt good.”

“He hit it and everybody was screaming 'bye ball,' ” Fox said. “It was awesome. You got to love having Thayres back there.”

Jumping out to quick leads is something the West Deptford coaching staff has been hammering into the heads of the players, and the message has gotten through during the postseason. The Eagles led 3-0 after two innings of their first-round win, to go with the 4-0 lead they staked Friday.

“We preached to them all year about first-inning tempo,” said West Deptford head coach Mike Rucci. “When you can come out on the road and put a four-spot up, you are going to take a lot of life out of the other dugout, and we did that.

“(Thayres) has just been swinging the bat out of his mind and playing great behind the plate.”

Delran came back with two runs in the bottom of the second, but Fox was able to limit the damage, getting a strikeout and ground out to escape a bases-loaded, one-out jam. The Eagles plated two more in the top of the third on an RBI by Brendan Glass and a run scored by Tim Merget on a throwing error.

Merget scored again in the fifth when he stole third and was able to score on another throwing error, giving the Eagles a 7-2 lead.

The margin was 8-3 in the bottom of the sixth when Fox appeared to tire. He walked the first three batters, putting the tying run on deck. With Urban warming in the bullpen, Rucci stuck with Fox. His faith was rewarded when Fox got a ground ball that resulted in a force out at home, and only allowed a sac fly after that. Fox finally exited after a wild pitch closed the gap to 8-5.

Receiving a vote of confidence to try to work out of a big jam was nothing new for Fox.

“Coach has had confidence in every single one of us this year,” said Fox. “When we win, when we lose, coach is still there for us. He said no matter what, he is never going to give up on us. He threw me out there and I just did what could and let Urban take it from there.”

“(Fox) showed it to us early on that he could pitch out of (jams) and minimize damage and that’s what we needed him to do,” Rucci added.

Urban got the final out in the sixth and induced a 4-6-3 double play to finish the game in the seventh.

The good news continued even after the win, as the Eagles found out that they will have a home game next week, thanks to Point Pleasant Boro’s 11-3 win over No. 3 Buena.

“You come into the playoffs and it’s a clean slate,” Thayres said. “Anything can happen. A 16 seed can beat a No. 1 seed and vice versa. … We’re pumped. We are ready and looking forward to it.”

The playoff run comes after the team ended the season on a sour note, losing  four straight.

That's ancient history now.

“You can just feel the different mentality we have right now. We are playing with confidence kind of like we did in the middle of the year,” said Rucci. “To get that back at this time of the season is tremendous, and is a lot of credit to these guys for toughening up and getting it done.”