2016 Bradenton Pirates Top Tampa Yankees for Back-to-Back Titles in CFABL

Central Florida Adult Baseball League

Bradenton Pirates 8, Tampa Yankees 0

‘Pirates Make it Back-to-Back in Central Florida MABL’

Submitted by Billy Rockwell, Pirates manager

We have been very fortunate to have a strong core of players that showed up almost every weekend to play. I would say that our pitching and definitely our defense helped us out the most. Mike Mullen, Marquis Hutchinson, Bobby Martin, and Melvin Mancebo were our four main core pitchers. Pat Tufano, with a .419 average, and Tony Lujan, with a .420 average, led the team in hitting. Melvin Mancebo was not far behind hitting .395. Chris Kastor and Nick Everton are the comeback players of the season for us. Kastor started off pretty slow and in a slump but came around. Nick really pulled through for us in the playoffs batting .261 in the regular season and .455 in the post season while also hitting his first home run.

Everyone on the team played an important role. I am very proud of all my guys. The Bradenton Pirates have mostly been together for five years and this is our fifth Championship we have won, our second in the CFABL. We went 22-3 in regular season play and 5-1 in the playoffs. The Championship series against the Tampa Yankees was pretty tough but we came out on top. Tony Lujan was also a huge help these past two season and I couldn’t have done it without him and I can’t thank him enough.