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07/31/2015 12:00 AMThe Branford Junior Legion baseball team featured one of its youngest rosters in a few seasons this year, but that didn't stop Post 83 from being crowned co-champions of Zone 2 and winning a pair of playoff games in Head Coach Ryan Santoro's final summer in the dugout.
Branford ended its regular season at 19-5 in the zone to share the title with Hamden en route to an overall record of 20-10. Post 83 then lost to Norwalk 3-1 in its State Tournament opener before defeating Westport (10-3) and Norwalk (5-0), after which they were eliminated by taking a 3-1 loss against Meriden for a total mark of 22-12.
"These kids were all ready to play and that's why we were successful in the playoffs and played so well. We played our best baseball at the end. That's all you can ask for and we're also really proud that, over the course of the year, the teams that were older than us, we played with," said Head Coach Ryan Santoro. "Those guys were older and we played with them. It's a benefit to us because we know moving forward, when these guys on my team this year eventually move up to a higher level of baseball, they're going to be ready to go. That's always been the pride of our program—getting these guys ready for Senior Legion when they're juniors."
It took some time for Branford to get things rolling this year. Through the first month of the summer, Post 83 played just 11 zone games and was 8-3. Then they went to the Firecracker Tournament in Rhode Island and lost all three games they played. After that, however, Branford won 11 of 13 contests to close out a busy home stretch of the regular season.
"I think early on, up until the Firecracker Tournament, the kids were adjusting a little bit. They were adjusting to the wood bat and some of these guys were adjusting to the amount of innings we were playing on a weekly basis. We told them, the hardest part of this season is not so much the physical part—it's the mental part. You come from high school, where these kids mostly played JV, some got some varsity innings, but you're only playing 15 games on JV and you're going to have 20 on varsity," Santoro said. "Let's say these kids played no more than 22 games in a season, counting postseason tournaments, and here we are playing five or six games a week. We played 34 games in a matter of six or seven weeks. That's literally five games a week. For the most part, the kids did a great job with it."
After some adjustments were made, Branford flashed the firepower it needed to make a huge impact down the stretch as Post 83's only two losses came against fellow Zone 2 co-champion Hamden and third place club New Haven.
"We finished strong. We peaked at the right time going into the tournament. You can tell, as the season, the second part wore on, our kids, I don't know what it was, but something clicked," Santoro said. "They were playing hard, they pulled for each other, and our pitchers did their job in throwing strikes and letting the defense make the plays. Our hitters had great at-bats that stretch, we played phenomenal defense, and we just played really, really well."
A huge reason why Branford had such a great season was the strength of its pitching staff. While many Legion teams struggle to find enough players to take the mound, Santoro had the luxury of featuring two guys on his roster who pitched exclusively. Jack Spencer and Devon Lawson were those two and DJ Caron and Mike Hoyt also tossed quality innings from the hill. Santoro even had other hurlers like Keane Regan, Ethan Despres, and Henry Watson who he could call upon to throw some innings when needed.
"I don't think we had a No. 1. We had four No. 1s, to be honest," said Santoro, who praised Lawson and Spencer for adjusting to the role of only pitching every fifth day. "It's good to know we had a good pitching staff and it didn't just fall off. It didn't die at one point in the season where arms were tired. We as a coaching staff knew how we had to manage it, we did that to the best of our ability, and it showed the kids that when you do it this way, it can work, so they also realized this is my role, this is what I'm going to do to help the team, and forget just pitching for a moment. When you have guys that understand that, it's invaluable. It's gold. That's why I think we had great success on the mound."
Post 83's staff allowed just 47 runs in its 24 zone games, which was 27 fewer than any other team. In terms of offense, Branford scored a zone-best 162 runs.
"If you look at the runs we put up and runs we gave up, any time you can hit, pitch, and play defense, that's a winning formula there in and of itself," Santoro said. "I think at the end of the day, in the playoffs, all it came down to was not getting the timely hit. That was it. That's baseball. There's nothing you can do about not getting timely hits."
The leadership shown by Post 83's veteran duo of center fielder Trevor Brown and shortstop Derek Candelora was another key factor behind why they played such great baseball when it mattered most. Brown and Candelora were in charge of positioning their peers on defense during the State Tournament. Santoro said he let them shift players for certain batters and, more often than not, he felt they made the right decision to help record the out.
"What really helped is that these guys were pretty close off the field. I know that there were a few kids that would have the whole team over to hang out and I'm pretty sure that they had a group text as well, so that certainly helped that they were close off the field because that allowed them to start to understand each other to play on the field," Santoro said. "For our coaching staff, that's the biggest challenge. Every year, when we bring these kids on, we don't really know them. We know that they have talent, but we don't know their personalities. That's why I give testament to the leaders we identified in Trevor and Derek to really get these guys to buy in and that's what helped us."
The way this group of guys played made Santoro proud in what he called his last season as the head coach of the Branford Junior Legion squad. After 10 years of coaching that includes nine as the Post 83 Juniors skipper, Santoro is stepping down to either move into a different capacity with the town's Legion program or an administrative role within the state.
"From start to finish, every single one of these kids grew. They got better physically and mentally and that's why we played so well. They went out and got exponentially better from day one to the last day and that's what we're most proud of," said Santoro. "Sometimes, you want to look at it and say forget winning for a second because it isn't everything—although it's great—but knowing that we made these kids better, that to me is what our coaching staff is the most proud of. And we're proud of the kids for it, too."