MSA Sports Baseball Playoff Recap for Friday, May 23rd

By: Bruce Markey
Saturday, May 24, 2014 | 12:23 AM

Seven Final Four baseball games took place on Thursday as the winners celebrated a berth in the finals while the losers began to regroup and prepare to play for a berth in the state playoffs. That left one missing piece to the district championship puzzle and that played out Friday afternoon at West Mifflin High School. Here is the recap.

A special thanks to Dennis Fischer for his help on this recap.

WPIAL CLASS AAA Semifinals:

West Allegheny Indians 3 – Hampton Talbots 1 
The #10 seeded West Allegheny Indians engineered their third straight upset of the Triple A baseball playoffs by knocking off the #3 seeded Hampton Talbots 3-1 on Friday afternoon at West Mifflin High School to advance to the title game where they’ll face Section 1 rival, Blackhawk.  Previously, the Indians defeated #7 Laurel Highlands and #2 Chartiers Valley.  West Allegheny struck first with a single run in the bottom of the second inning when, with two outs, Colin Claus singled, his courtesy runner Ty Scanlon stole second, and then scored on a single by Nick Wiethorn.  Hampton answered the in the top of the third when Eddie Edwards was hit by a pitch and scored two outs later on a fielder’s choice.  The winning runs came in the fourth when, again with two outs, Jake Cunningham reached on a throwing error on a routine groundball and scored on a Claus double.  Scanlon, running for Claus, was then chased home on another Wiethorn base hit.  Claus was the winning pitcher for West Allegheny (17-4), going five and one third, surrendering one run on six hits, issuing one walk, and striking out three.  Tyler Amedure came on in relief, striking out four of the five batters he faced, while not allowing a baserunner.  Ben Vey took the loss for Hampton (13-7), pitching five plus, giving up one earned run on seven hits, and striking out four.  Dave Cricks came on in relief pitching a perfect sixth inning.  Hampton will face West Mifflin in the consolation game next week, the winner qualifying for the PIAA tournament.