Pitcher Mike Kammerer (Central Catholic/Kutztown) returns for the Allentown Railers. (CHRIS KNIGHT / SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL)
Keith Groller -- Contact Reporter
May 30, 2016
The summer of 2015 provided a season for the ages for the Allentown Railers.
The team set an Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League record by going 37-6 and won the league title in just its fourth season of existence.
But the only thing harder than winning one championship is repeating the next year, and while the Railers remain the favorites in the eight-team ACBL, they will be hard-pressed to come close to duplicating last year's success.
"It's hard to tell right now what we have because we don't have a lot of guys back," said manager Dylan Dando, who has built a franchise that has now gone 92-31 over the last three years. "We have just five returning players and one of them played in just 10 games.
"A lot of stuff has got to happen to 37-6. We had James Bertolotti, who was our catcher three years, and we had Brett Bittiger, who was our shortstop for three years. They manned two key positions for us. We had a lot of guys who were there for three years and we had the best record in the regular season for three straight years. Now we have to replace a lot of those guys."
Dando said that he just doesn't know how the new guys will come in and compete.
"It's always hard to determine how good or bad you're going to be because you just don't know how they're going to play in the summer," Dando said. "I just want the guys to come in and play hard and focus on every pitch of the game. That's what you have to do to play baseball at the level these guys want to reach to play baseball."
The season begins this week with each of the eight teams set to play 40 regular-season games ending on July 31.
The top four teams (two division winners and the next two best records) advance to the playoffs in the first week of August. Each series will be a best-of-three.
The league's all-star game will be held on July 21 in Pomona, N.Y.
And the ACBL hopes to hit a milestone with its 100th alumni reaching the big leagues.
"We have 99 right now, and we are hoping to get No. 100 this year," said Dr. Tom Bonekemper, the ACBL's president. "And we've had over 2,000 go from the ACBL to professional baseball."
There's a good chance the league will have several players drafted again in June. The ACBL had 34 past or current players who are coming off winning all-conference honors at Division I schools, including Lehigh's Mike Garzillo, who was the Patriot League's player of the year.
The league also features 27 players who were Division II or III All-Region players this spring, including East Stroudsburg University's Robert Bennie, who was the PSAC's position player of the year.
"While it's very competitive with so many summer collegiate baseball leagues, we still get our share of high-level kids playing amateur ball," Bonekemper said. "We want to develop student-athletes so that they can improve their baseball skills over the summer. It's still a developmental league. It's not necessarily about winning. It's about making the kids better players and better people."
Here's a look at the three Morning Call-area teams:
ALLENTOWN RAILERS
•Manager: Dylan Dando (fifth season).
•Home: ECTB Stadium at Bicentennial Park, Allentown.
•2015: 37-6 (won Wolff Division, def. South Jersey Giants two games to none in the semis and Staten Island Tide in finals).
•Hitters to watch: C Derian Scarlat (Kutztown); SS Connor Crookham (ESU); C-OF Edward Posavec (Binghamton); INF Chris Rabasco (Parkland/U. of Pennsylvania); OF-2B Jason McCormick (Immaculata).
•Pitchers to watch: Sean Pavlik (Penn State); Mike Kammerer (CCHS/Kutztown); Gabe Mosser (Parkland/Shippensburg); Dan Zurowski (Misericordia); Brett Kosciolek (Tamaqua/Rider).
•Outlook: Dando was confident at the start of last season and predicted a very good season, although no one could have anticipated 37-6. This year, he's not sure what he has. He's got a couple of quality players returning, including Crookham, who Dando says has the potential to be the best player in the league. Posavec, a North Penn product, is coming off an American East all-conference season at Binghamton. This is the gold standard in the ACBL at the moment and while the Railers won't duplicate their 2015, they should have another good season.
LEHIGH VALLEY CATZ
•Manager: Dennis Morgan (pitching coach last year).
•Home: Easton High School and Hackett Park.
•2015: 8-28 (last in Wolff Division).
•Hitters to watch: OF Ryan Bonshak (Whitehall/Lehigh); OF Anthony Gaetaniello (Nazareth/Moravian); OF Austin Edgette (Bloomsburg); C Mike Kacergis (DeSales); 1B Thomas Schumacher (Lehigh).
•Pitchers to watch: Pat Carbone (Moravian); Tyler Forbes (Northampton CC); Michael Schwab (Lehigh).
•Outlook: The Catz, who have Morgan back in charge, figure to be improved. "We will be strong behind the plate and we'll have a good outfield," Morgan said. "I'm a little concerned about the infield and we don't have a lot of pitching depth." Edgette hit .440 for Bloomsburg and led the PSAC in hitting, but the team features a lot of unknowns.
QUAKERTOWN BLAZERS
•Manager: Dewey Oriente (first season).
•Home: Quakertown Memorial Park.
•2015: 20-20 (lost to Staten Island two games to none in the playoff semis).
•Hitters to watch: C Angel Lopez (Northampton CC); IF Jared Melone (La Salle); OF Jimmy Herron (Duke).
•Pitchers to watch: Chris Kachmar (Upper Perk/FDU); Pat Kelley (Chestnut Hill College); Dan Morrin (Moravian).
•Outlook: The Blazers feature a new manager in Oriente, a Saint Joseph's University product. He completed his first season at DeSales, where he served as the recruiting coordinator. Previously, he was the hitting coach at Widener. He has plenty of quality hitters to work with at Quakertown, including Herron, a La Salle College High School product, who hit .328 at Duke and led the Blue Devils in hits (66), doubles (22) and steals (24) in being named second-team all-ACC. Melone led La Salle University with a .321 batting mark as a freshman and was named to the Atlantic 10 rookie team. Lopez had a .387 averaging and .664 slugging average at NCC, where he was named the EPAC player of the year and a first-team NJCAA Region XIX selection.
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