By Michael Letendre

BRISTOL – Thank goodness the regular season is coming to a close in Connecticut American Legion baseball this week because the Bristol Senior program is simply out of pitching.

Through injuries and pitch counts, the roster is depleted with just one left remaining game in regular season play.

Bristol squares off against Simsbury (6-9) tonight from Muzzy Field in Bristol (5:30 p.m.) in a Zone 1 attraction.

Post 2 (9-6 Zone 1) is treating the game like a must-win with the playoffs starting on Saturday.

A win could see the locals earn a home game against Enfield at Muzzy this weekend so the stakes are extremely high.

And after a stellar four inning victory over Meriden on Sunday, Dylan Woodsome (1-0) will be pressed into duty, in a starting role this time, looking for his second win of the campaign.

Backing him up will be Jayden Churchill who saw a little action on the hill in the previous day’s 12-2 mercy ruled shortened loss against West Hartford.

That 10 run defeat was partially due to Bristol running out of arms at the worst possible time.  

“I had to save Woody for Wednesday and Jayden wasn’t going more than 30” pitches against West Hartford said Bristol coach Jerry LaPenta. “That was just trying to get Jayden a feel. I thought he did a little better. He threw some strikes because his last outing [at Torrington], he didn’t throw too many strikes.”

“He hasn’t pitched a ton either.”

Speaking of that Torrington game from last Saturday, Woodsome earned the save over a 0.2 inning effort – throwing just 18 pitches – and the following day in game one against Meriden, the chucker needed just 30 pitches to snare a huge 10-7 win out of the bullpen.

And his arm is warmed up and ready to go against a better-than-advertised Simsbury squad later today.

West Hartford saw a Bristol ace only once this season

When the pitching rotation came around for the West Hartford games this season, only once did the top ranked American Legion baseball squad (15-0 Zone 1) see one of Bristol’s best pitchers.

On Monday, June 13, Matt Beaucar threw 5.2 innings of 108 pitch ball as Post 96 wrangled up a 5-0 win from Muzzy Field.

And before Beaucar left the mound, Bristol was still hanging around in that contest.

But the Post 96 program never faced Roberto Cruz (4-0) which would have been a real test for Zone 1’s top team.

“West Hartford is a good team but I haven’t pitched our best pitchers against them just because I want to get wins and I don’t want to waste our best pitching on the best team in our zone,” said LaPenta. “[Plus], we’ve already locked up second place.”

The goal is to win the final game of the regular season against Simsbury, looking to take the season series from the squad and gain some momentum for a postseason push.

The last time the team’s squared off on July 5, Post 2 pulled out a 6-3 win on the road and the team is looking for a similar result on Wednesday.

“Tomorrow we have Woody and Jayden and I think if we get the win [against Simsbury], we get a home game on Saturday,” said LaPenta. “We’ll be four games back over .500 if we win tomorrow.” 

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