SAEGERTOWN — Cochranton is playing some outstanding ball right now.

That’s, really, all that needs to be said. There are a lot of words following this sentence, but they’re essentially superfluous. The bottom line is this: The Cochranton American Legion baseball team is playing some outstanding ball right now.

Here’s Cochranton — the fifth seed out of the five-team Crawford/Venango American Legion baseball league. The Blues needed to win a play-in game just to get into the championship tournament, which they did, downing No. 4 seed Franklin 5-3 on Thursday.

That win matched Cochranton up with the league’s top seed, French Creek Valley, in the tournament’s first round. And so Cochranton dispatches French Creek Valley to the loser’s bracket, beating the top seed 8-4 on Friday.

This brings us to Saturday at Ed Acker Field. It’s Cochranton — the fifth seed, remember — against second-seed Meadville. Cochranton dumps Meadville 7-5. Cochranton finds itself in today’s championship game.

Why?

Because Cochranton is playing some outstanding baseball right now.

“We finally started hitting,” said Cochranton’s Zach Staudt. “We’ve been in a slump all summer long. We came into this thing batting something like .240 as a team.”

It was .223, actually.

“Our biggest problem was that we had no offense,” said Bluebirds coach Randy Staudt. “Our fielding percentage was the highest its been ever since I’ve been keeping stats here. Our team ERA was decent. So the only reason we couldn’t win games was that we couldn’t score.”

Piling it on; for yesterday’s game Cochranton was facing Meadville pitcher Ben Lowmaster, who had already fired two no-hitters at Cochranton this season.

Yet, the bubble finally burst in the first inning as Cochranton jumped on Lowmaster and the Red Dogs for five runs on four hits.

Cochranton loaded the bases on a pair of walks and an error. And Zach Staudt shook off the 14-inning Lowmaster curse with a single to left, driving in a run. Mikel Boughner followed with a single to the right side, driving in another run.

With one out, Dalton Pence brought two home with a single to right. And Zac Culbertson kept the party going with an RBI single to left.

Needless to say, Cochranton’s pitcher Cody Northcott liked what he saw.