The Millbrook baseball team’s season is over as a result of a violation of the Virginia High School League’s pitching rules.

Pioneers coordinator of student activities TJ Rohrbaugh announced on Twitter on Thursday afternoon that Millbrook discovered that it used a player in Tuesday’s Class 4 Northwestern District quarterfinal game against Handley “who was ineligible to pitch in that contest based on VHSL Rule 56-4-2 Pitching Regulations.”

According to the VHSL Handbook, a violation of this rule constitutes “forfeiture of any games in which such violation occurs.” As a result, Millbrook had to forfeit its 8-2 win against Handley and ends its season with a 16-4 record.

The Pioneers earned the second seed in the district tournament and were scheduled to host No. 3 Kettle Run on Thursday in the semifinals. Instead, No. 7 Handley will play at Kettle Run at 6 p.m. on Monday. 

When reached by phone, Rohrbaugh said Millbrook would not say anything more than what was posted on Twitter. A phone message placed to Millbrook baseball coach Brian Burke was not returned by press time.

According to the VHSL pitching regulations, if a pitcher throws 101 or more pitches in a day, four calendar days of rest must be observed. According to GameChanger — a company whose website and mobile app is used by all area high school teams use to post statistics — there’s a discrepancy in the number of pitches thrown by a Millbrook pitcher in Friday’s game against James Wood.

According to Millbrook’s desktop/laptop GameChanger, the player threw 100 pitches on Friday, which meant he would have been eligible to pitch on Tuesday against Handley since he had three days of rest (Saturday, Sunday, Monday). Millbrook's mobile app has the pitcher throwing 108 pitches. According to James Wood’s GameChanger, he threw 107, which meant Tuesday would have been his required fourth day of rest.

This is the first time since 2019 Millbrook will not play in the Region 4C tournament. The Pioneers lost to Kettle Run in the semifinals that year. Last year’s Millbrook team played in the Class 4 state quarterfinals.