Good pitching can take you a long way, no matter what league you’re talking about. For Lower Macungie, a strong pitching staff had carried it throughout the season, so things looked pretty good for the team coming into the Connie Mack state playoffs.

Unfortunately for the Mustangs, the pitching didn’t stand up as Lower Macungie lost its first two games and was quickly eliminated.

In the playoff opener against Souderton, Lower Mac struggled to get anybody out. The Mustangs sent four different pitchers to the mound and none of them were able to slow down the Souderton offense. Most of the damage came in the bottom of the third inning when Souderton batted around twice and scored 14 runs in an inning that Lower Macungie would love to forget. To its credit though, the team kept battling, even though it was down 17-0, and scored three runs over the final two innings, in a game shortened to five innings by the mercy rule.

“Obviously, you’re going to face good teams in these games, but we never imagined that our pitching would struggle the way it did for us,” said Lower Mac head coach Tim Hertzog. “Nobody ever thinks that they’re going to give up that many runs and I would have never believed it.”

With the loss sending Lower Macungie to the loser’s bracket, it was paired up against Warrington. Warrington came prepared to hit and the usually strong Lower Macungie pitching was no match. Warrington jumped to a quick 2-0 lead in the first inning and really came alive after Lower Macungie tied the game in the top of the third, with Adam LeMaster driving in both runs.

LeMaster, who was also the starting pitcher, couldn’t shut down Warrington in the bottom of the inning as it took a 4-2 lead and would later expand that lead to 12-2 after LeMaster had left the game.

The two losses were disappointing to a Lower Macungie team looking to spend some time on the field in the playoffs after falling short of the postseason last year.

“Our guys were excited to reach states and have the opportunity to play,” said Hertzog. “We had a good season and thought we were ready for the competition, but for whatever reason, our pitching just didn’t compete the way we did all season long and we paid for it.”

If you want to find a point where things started to go wrong for Lower Macungie, you could look to its league playoff loss to rival Emmaus. Up 6-2 going to the seventh inning, Lower Mac looked ready to seal the deal against its rival, until the Hornets scored four runs to tie the game. Two innings later, Emmaus scored twice in the top of the ninth and a Lower Macungie rally in the bottom of the inning came up short, leading to an 8-7 loss.

“That was a tough one,” said Hertzog. “We had a pretty comfortable lead. We’re playing our rivals. Everything seemed in place, but they came back and got us. It was good, though, to see our team battle to the very end and we just had to look to build on that.”