Berwick wins battle of 3A top 10 power ranked teams against Erath

Published 2:00 pm Sunday, April 10, 2022

ERATH — Two teams ranked in the top 10 in the unofficial Class 3A power rankings met Saturday when Berwick headed to Erath to face the Bobcats in a non-district baseball game.

At the end of the day, it was Bewick proving why it is the best in Class 3A and one of the favorites to win the Class 3A title when the playoffs begin in three weeks.

The Panthers strung together eight runs on 11 hits while holding Erath to two runs in an 8-2 win that moved Berwick to 23-4 on the season. Erath fell to 10-17.

“They proved why they are not only the best team in the power rankings but also the best team in 3A in the polls as well,” Erath coach Jeremy Picard said. “You want to play games against teams like that because it lets us know where we are and what we need to do to get to their level.”

Before the game, the Panthers sat atop the power rankings while Erath had scratched and clawed its way to 10th in the power rankings with two weeks left in the season.

While Berwick came away with the win, it’s not a bad loss for an Erath team that’s trying to stay in the top 16 of the power rankings to play host to a first-round playoff game for the first time since 2019.

“It’s a loss, yes, today we lost,” Picard said. “But they are a good team and we faced good competition and a good arm and it prepared us for the final two weeks as we get ready to go into the playoffs.”

The killer for the Bobcats Saturday was that twice Erath had the bases loaded with no one out and couldn’t push any runs across the plate.

“We had two big innings that we gave away,” Picard said. “All we can do is move forward and go to Crowley Tuesday and keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

For Erath, Lynkon Romero had two hits, Ethan Sanfilippo had a hit and scored a run while Sage Suire and Seth Leger each had a hit for the Bobcats in the losing effort.