Burlington Hunters ready for Semi-finals weekend

Tri-State baseball playoffs heating up as semifinals approach

Copyright By Peter Wallace,Corresponden tAug 7, 2025 For Hearst Connecticut Media

TORRINGTON — This weekend, after two Tri-State Baseball League playoff rounds, the real drama begins in the best-of-three semifinal series beginning Friday. Thirteen Tri-State teams play 20 games apiece in a regular season that lasts through weekends and scattered weeknights from early May through mid-August. For a high-caliber adult league full of current and former college players plus a few high school stars and MLB alumni, that’s enough to establish a firm ranking 1-13. The top teams are there for very good baseball reasons.

No surprise, then, that the top eight teams all survived one-day play-in rounds two weeks ago, or that the top four teams obliterated their opponents in best-of-three quarterfinal series except for the No. 4 Wolcott Scrappers, who came from behind to beat the No. 5 CT Sliders in three games Monday night at Waterbury’s Municipal Stadium. Never mind that the No. 2 seed Tri-Town Trojans, based in Litchfield, have won the last four league championships, based on great pitching, defense and timely hitting. Or that the No. 1 seed Bethlehem Plowboys, one of the best hitting teams in the league (17-4 and 15-0 over No. 8 the Amenia Monarchs last weekend), have battered almost everybody but the Trojans on their way to the runner-up spot for the last three years. Despite Wolcott’s 15-4 dip to the Sliders in Game 1 of their quarterfinal series, the playoff rankings that proved right in every series until now has a miniscule spread: Bethlehem and Tri-Town are both 19-3; the No. 3 Burlington Hunters are 18-4; and the Scrappers are 18-5. Who’s going to bet the ranch against that field?

An historic fifth straight championship for the Trojans in a league dating back to 1937? The Plowboys beat them in the final game of the regular-season in a walk-off win for top seeding. Beyond that duel, last Saturday’s first game of the quarterfinal series between No. 3 Burlington and No. 6 Valley Kraken (New Milford) stamped the available closeness — and surprises — of the final two rounds this weekend and next. Last Saturday at Fuessenich Park, Sean O’Donnell, No. 10 in the batting order in a league that allows an extra hitter, blasted a three-run triple in the second inning for a lead that stretched to 5-0, protected by three different pitchers. In the regular season, Burlington lost a game to the Plowboys in the final inning and took Tri-Town to extra innings before the Trojans won. Burlington pitchers, Ty Morin, Tim Krol and Andrew Hinckley are part of the No. 3 Hunters’ optimism going into the 2025 Tri-State Baseball League playoff semifinals starting Friday, August 8.

“Every year, for the past three or four years, we’ve taken another step,” said veteran player/coach Andrew Bunger. “It’s always been so close,” said O’Donnell, one of several quality players the Hunters added after long-time league power Terryville disbanded a few years ago. “We just have to put it together late in the game.” “It wasn’t the pitching, it was our batters,” said Tim Kroll, a graduate this year of American International College in Springfield. “I think we’ve got the pitching this year,” said Ty Morin, a part of Saturday’s three-man staff along with ace Derek Duffy and closer Andrew Hinckley, a 2017 graduate of CCSU. “In past years, we were always an out or two short or an arm or two short,” Bunger said. “This year, I think we have the best leadoff hitter in the league in Chad Lovelle.” Duffy went 40 straight innings this year, allowing just two runs over that span. Burlington hasn’t beaten the Plowboys since 2011, Bunger said. This could be the year, he added. A day later, the Hunters beat Valley Kraken, 14-3.

Wolcott proved its mettle with two straight wins against the Sliders, 9-3 and 7-4, on Sunday and Monday. Two weeks ago, after beating the Trojans for the top seed, Plowboy manager Rich Revere, asked what it would take to finally topple the Tri-Town for the championship, said “Just play good baseball.” For the next two weekends in the Tri-State League, that much is guaranteed. For anything else, all bets are off. Keep up with it if you like at tristatebaseballct.com.