Green Devils down Raiders in regional quarterfinals

The book on Arcadia baseball’s 2026 season was brought to a close with their loss in the opening round of the playoffs last week.

No. 7 seed Adams Friendship (13-14) battled past the 10th-seeded Raiders (6-18) for a 5-2 win in their Division Two regional quarterfinal matchup last Thursday in Adams.

After the Green Devils scored the first run of the evening in the top of the first, Arcadia’s Max Blaschko hit a leadoff double to start the second, advanced to third on a groundout and scored on Carson Wozney’s RBI single to level the score at 1-1.

Adams-Friendship immediately seized the lead back with another run in the bottom half of the same inning, then later cobbled together a three-run rally in the fifth inning. Needing a rally to keep their season alive in the top of the seventh, the Raiders scored once and had the bases loaded with two outs, only for Green Devils pitcher Gabe Seis to strike out Jonah Slaby to end the threat, the game and Arcadia’s 2026 campaign.

Blaschko’s double and Austin Hughes’s seventh-inning single were the team’s only hits in last Thursday’s loss, which marked the end of the high school careers of the Raiders’ four seniors: Blaschko, Hughes, Wozney and Juan Barrientos.

Mel-Min 9 Arcadia 6

In their final game of the regular season, the Raiders gave up eight runs over a two-inning span to miss out on a chance for a win last Tuesday in Melrose.

The two teams traded runs in the first inning and that 1-1 scoreline held up through four innings. Arcadia erupted for a five-run rally in the top of the fifth, featuring Ben Lightfoot’s RBI single and Blaschko’s three-run home run.

However, the Mustangs (14-5) tallied four runs in both the bottom of the fifth and sixth to leapfrog ahead and secure the victory.

In addition to Blaschko’s headlining homer, Deklyn Grzadzielewski went 2 for 4 with two runs scored for the Raiders.