The Alpha Braves handled their business in the finals and soundly defeated the 2-Time Defending Champion Cardinals. Game 1 was play on Saturday with the Braves winning 9-7 in a slug fest that feature four home runs.
On Sunday at Sam Balliet Stadium the Braves didn't make a mistake and capitalized on every opportunity. They put up 18 runs and the game ended by Mercy rule in the 5th Inning.
Congratulations to the 2023 AAA Alpha Braves!
Braves Season Story
The Alpha Braves are the 2023 LVBL AAA division champions. Alpha has been no stranger to the big stage as in their seven years of existence they have made the trip to the championship six times. This season culminated with the franchise winning their second title; 2018 was their first. Alpha defeated the two time defending champions the LV Cardinals by scores of 9-7 and 17-0. It was the third consecutive year these teams have met in the championship. Winning the championship this season was the result player/manager Zach Vegh expected but it didn’t happen the way he envisioned; “definitely the result I expected, but not the way I expected it to happen. Our pre-season starting rotation looked nothing like it did coming into the championship series, it just speaks volumes to the depth we had.” The projected rotation for 2023 for Alpha looked like Chris Lilly, Chase Alessandroni, and Jeffery Reynoso, but due to injuries it didn’t happen that way. The final rotation was 2023 Phillipsburg High School graduate Jake Remian, and Albright baseball player John O’Connor and both pitchers for the most part were lights out. They received great contributions from Colton Langworthy with spot starts and bullpen duty and they had the best closer in the league in Rob Howell. Vegh also credits bullpen pitchers Jordan Perrine and Joey Troxell and said “we had a true pitching plan that we could rely on for the second half of the season and those guys all accepted their roles.”
Some might say they have a lethal line up coming into a season but it’s rare for a team to proclaim themselves “murderer’s row” and actually back it up like the Braves did. Alpha had six players hitting .380 or better with the minimum AB’s, six players with double digit RBI’s, five players with 20 hits or more, and eight players with double digit runs scored. The Braves scored an astonishing 196 runs this year over twenty three games which is good for almost nine runs per game and finished with a +94 run differential. “I knew coming into the season our line up would be pretty deep and there were going to be weeks I was going to have tough decisions to make but I never questioned our ability to score runs whenever we needed to.” In a sport like baseball there are going to be days when things just don’t go your way and that happened a couple of times to the Braves but for the most part and especially when they needed it the most their offense came through.
