Baseball: McDonald strong for Lake Park against Naperville North
With the way Jim McDonald was throwing the baseball Friday, the right-handed didn't need a lot of run support.
His Lake Park teammates obliged anyway.
Cranking out eight hits over the first two innings, the Lancers cruised to an 8-0 victory over Naperville North in the middle game of the DuPage Valley Conference series in Roselle.
Staked to an early 7-0 advantage, McDonald struck out nine batters in five innings, including four in the third inning, while allowing four hits. Relievers Joe Amore and Dan Defino came on and combined to fan five.
"Basically, I try to get out there early on and get everything working - my fastball, my curveball," said McDonald, who improved to 3-1 on the spring. "It helps when you've got guys in the field who can pick it. I try to just throw it over the plate.
"You have a lot of confidence when you have a 7-run lead. I didn't have to be too pinpoint, just go out there and throw."
Utilizing a sharp breaking ball, McDonald saw 18 of his pitches go for swinging strikes.
"When you strike out 14 guys in a game, that minimizes any pressure on the defense," Lake Park coach Dan Colucci said. "Jim is a good pitcher, and when he is going, he's got three good pitches. When you spot him an early lead, he can relax and pound the zone."
Lake Park (10-4, 5-3) pushed across two in the bottom of the first, with Joe Kennedy and McDonald both collecting RBI hits. The home team scored five more in the second as Dom Fallico, Connor Cook and Michael Nielsen all had run-scoring hits.
"All the credit goes to them," said Naperville North coach Carl Hunckler, whose team won the opener of the series. "They hit the ball well, they pitched well. I told our guys, sometimes you win the match and sometimes they win the match. Their pitcher won the match today, he was outstanding."
A bright spot for the Huskies was Zach Benaitis, who worked 4⅓ innings of relief, yielding 1 run.
A.J. Ackerley had a pair of doubles for the Lancers.
"Coach talked to us and said we were being tentative at the plate recently," McDonald said. "We came out and were more aggressive. We swung the bats a lot better."