Burrell baseball stays unbeaten in section play with victory over Mt. Pleasant

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | 9:52 PM


For four innings, Burrell was in control and Mt. Pleasant sputtered against Buccaneers right-hander Brayden Mell.

Then, the Vikings offense erupted for five runs, and Mt. Pleasant led by one in the fifth.

It didn’t hold up for the host team.

Adam Wass’ two-run single highlighted a three-run sixth that put visiting Burrell in front for good, and the Bucs beat Mt. Pleasant, 10-5, on Wednesday in a WPIAL Section 3-3A baseball game.

Burrell (5-2, 5-0) remained unbeaten against section teams.

“Obviously, you’re happy with the record when you’re winning,” Burrell coach Jay Miller said. “But there’s a lot of learning moments in these games, situations that we need to improve at, things we need to get better at. Limiting errors is crucial.”

While the box score reveals Burrell didn’t commit an error, Miller knows better. He was thinking more about mental mistakes.

“There were some balls that fell in that looked to be catchable,” he said. “That’s just a communication thing in most cases. We need to be better at communicating.”

Mell, with a four-run lead, was cruising along on a one-hitter for Burrell before Mt. Pleasant (5-4, 3-2) sent nine men to the plate in the bottom of the fifth to take a 5-4 lead.

Losing pitcher Jacob Kitz’s infield single drove in a pair of runs during the rally.

But Kitz was unable to protect the Vikings’ slim advantage as Burrell touched the senior right-hander for three runs in the top of the sixth.

The Bucs took advantage of an array of odd plays — Rayden Shirey’s bad-hop single to third, Kitz’s balk, multiple wild pitches and passed balls — to regain the lead.

“For us today, we didn’t help ourselves,” Mt. Pleasant coach Chris Firmstone said. “Errors, popouts, strikeouts. You’re not going to win any games doing that — at any level. You’ve got to catch the simple ground-ball two-hopper. We can’t let passed balls hurt us. And we didn’t make the adjustments at the plate that we need to on the pitcher. I’ll give (Mell) credit. He spotted the ball and was around the plate.”

Though he yielded six hits and walked four — most of the damage being done in Mt. Pleasant’s five-run fifth — Mell picked up the win, working five-plus innings.

He went back out to the mound for the sixth, but Miller replaced him with Wass after Mell walked Carter Strayer to lead off the inning.

The Vikings loaded the bases with one out against Wass, who escaped the jam by getting Cole Chatfield to ground into a forceout at home and Santino Marne to pop out to first.

“We had the bases loaded with one out and can’t hit the ball hard somewhere to score at least one,” Firmstone said.

Referring to a 9-6 loss to Deer Lakes in Mt. Pleasant’s previous game April 1, Firmstone noted that the Vikings struck out 11 times and stranded 16 baserunners.

“In the past two games, we’ve lost a little mental focus,” he said. “Hopefully, we get it out of our system now versus the end of the year.

“Nobody likes to lose. I don’t like the way we’ve been losing.”

Burrell’s season has started fast, yet Miller remains cautious and his motor keeps revving.

“We’ve been dealing with the injuries, including to two of our pitchers,” he said. “We’ve been able to plug some holes. We’re working diligently every day to put this team in the best position to win.”

Burrell took a 2-0 lead in the first on a pair of wild pitches. The Bucs doubled up the score with two more runs in the fifth against Kitz on Mell’s two-out, two-run single.

Mell stumbled in the fifth, allowing all five of Mt. Pleasant’s runs and briefly losing the lead.

But his teammates bailed him out, rallying for three runs in the top of the sixth to take a 7-5 lead.

Ryan Wass also had two RBIs for Burrell.

During games, an animated Miller can become an entertainer of sorts. He insisted he’s not acting.

“I’ve always been loud. So, me making sure I can communicate is crucial to me,” he said. “I go quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. I think there are times when you have to slow down. And that just comes through conversation.

“You have to have conversation with these guys. Many need to be real-life situations, too. It can’t be sugar-coated. It can’t be soft all the time. You have to be very straightforward. These guys are young. You have to treat them that way.”

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