Jordan baseball’s gamble pays off in playoff opener against West Johnston
Jordan baseball head coach Aaron Brown was in an unfamiliar spot.
In the fourth inning against West Johnston (13-12) on Tuesday evening in Durham, the Falcons’ ace pitcher, Ben Miller, was approaching the 60-pitch mark. Jordan was up 4-0, and Miller was dealing. But Brown had to decide to keep his pitcher in or pull him, keep him under the pitch limit and save him for the next round.
The stakes were high, so the decision was tough. It was the first round of the N.C. High School Athletic Association 4A baseball playoffs, when the winner advances and the loser turns in their jerseys the next day.
Brown decided to pull him, brought in Tyler Wilson in the middle innings and freshman Luke Hutchinson to close it out.
The gamble paid off, and Jordan won 6-2.
The Falcons advance as the No. 3 overall seed and the No. 1 seed in the Mideast. Tuesday night’s win was also the 20th of the season for Jordan (20-5).
The whole situation was unfamiliar, though, because it is the first season of the new pitch count rules across high school baseball in North Carolina.
“It’s our first year in this playoff situation, and (the pitch count) is in play until you get to regional finals,” Brown said. “We’ll see. It’s one of those, when they scored the two runs, you start second-guessing yourself a little bit.”
In the fifth inning, the Wildcats scratched across two runs on two wild pitches from Wilson. Miller, the team’s ace, could only watch. Brown, the team’s coach, started to get nervous. But Hutchinson got the final nine outs to close the deal.
Strong pitching, excellent defense from third baseman Davis Downey and others and just enough hitting was enough to extend the Falcons’ season.
For the West Johnston Wildcats (13-12), it is the end of the road.
“They are a good ballclub, that’s why they are a No. 1,” West head coach Josh Plisko said. “They’ve got a lot of team speed, and they took advantage of that a little bit, and they started faster than we did.”
After the game, Plisko hugged each of his seniors and praised his team for their fight, for not giving up after going down early. And while the season is over, there are a lot of positives the Wildcats can take from a playoff appearance.
As Jordan prepares for Friday’s matchup against Fuquay Varina, Brown finds himself in more uncharted waters — navigating his Falcons into round two of the playoffs.
“We haven’t won a playoff game in a long time,” Brown said.
Jordan went 4-19 two seasons ago, in Brown’s first season as coach. Then, the team snuck into the 2016 playoffs as the 30th seed. They faced the No. 1 seed in the East, Hoggard, and lost 8-0. Now here they are a season later, the one seed themselves, advancing deeper into May.
This year’s dominance is not a fluke, Brown says, given how hard his group has worked to improve. And after a tough non-conference slate and a season’s worth of close games, Brown hopes the run isn’t close to over, either.
“We’ve played a lot of tight games,” Brown said. “Our bats — we know how to come back from behind. Our pitchers — we know how to throw with a small lead. So we are battle-tested, and we’ve done everything that we can to set them up for this playoff run.”
An unfamiliar situation awaits Friday in the second round of the state baseball playoffs. But the Falcons are hopeful that with a dominant ace up their sleeve, they can win another.
This story was originally published May 10, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Jordan baseball’s gamble pays off in playoff opener against West Johnston."