Brestensky pitches Hopwood past Oakland
Hopwood Village Plaza manager Buddy Marra was prepared to go to his bullpen in the seventh inning of Thursday’s Fayette County Baseball League game at Oakland with his team clinging to a 3-2 lead.
Justin Brestensky would have none of that.
“I had Santino (Marra) warming up since the fifth inning but Justin had a seven-pitch sixth,” Buddy Marra said of his starter. “When I went out to talk to him when he hit 100 pitches and asked how he was doing, his response was I’m great and you’ll have to drag me off of this mound by my spikes,” Marra added with a laugh.
Brestensky finished up with a complete game as Hopwood got just enough offense to pull out the 3-2 victory.
The win kept Hopwood (4-3) ahead of the Oaks (5-5) in second place in the standings behind frontrunning Carmichaels (4-1-1).
Matthew Firestone and two hits and an RBI and Chad Petrush singled twice for Hopwood, which also got an RBI double from Tate Musko and doubles from Wyatt Nehls and Ryan Covelens.
Brestensky allowed one earned run on nine hits with one walk and five strikeouts.
Hopwood struck for two runs in the first inning and maintain the lead the rest of the way.
“It was a cat-and-mouse game,” Marra said.
Chase Sankovich started the rally with a lead-off infield single, went to third on Covelens’ double to right and scored when he stole home. Musko followed with an RBI double to right to make it 2-0.
Oakland got one run back in the bottom of the frame when Wenkai Campbell hit a one-out single, went to second when Cody Cooper reached on an error, stole third and scored on Vincent Aloi’s single.
Hopwood pushed across what proved to be the winning run in the top of the third inning.
Santino Marra reached second base on a two-out error then scored from there on Firestone’s single to center for a 3-1 advantage.
The Oaks pulled within a run in the fourth when Aloi walked, advanced to third on Cameron Goble’s single to center and scored when Chris Green hit into a force out.
Brestensky allowed a two-out single to Mason Everhart in the seventh before closing out the game with a strikeout.
Marra guided M&R Transit to three consecutive FCBL titles from 2022 to 2024 before but it didn’t field a team last year. He’s happy to be back in the league with Hopwood.
“We had a lot of great new players this year and it took a few games to get the chemistry going but they are starting to get it together and they’re having a great time with the mix of the younger and older players,” Marra said. “It’s a lot of fun being around guys that love the game as much they do.”