Baseball: York looking for way out of funk
York was living the good life early in the season. The Dukes were 16-2 and seemingly could do no wrong.
Those days seem a long time ago now.
Visiting Lyons rapped out 12 hits and routed York 14-2 in five innings Monday in West Suburban Silver action in Elmhurst.
The Dukes (18-8, 9-7) have lost six of their last eight games. The Lions batted around in the first and second innings, sending 15 men to the plate during a 10-run second inning.
"It starts on the mound," York coach Dave Kalal said. "When you don't compete on the mound, it has a negative effect on the rest of the team and the rest of the game.
"That's what has been happening the last couple weeks. We've had maybe two or three good outings where we've been competitive, but when you don't compete on the mound and the pitchers don't get it done, bad things are going to happen."
Plenty of bad things happened to York's pitching staff. Starter Joey Chiappetta gave up 7 runs on 7 hits and 2 walks in just 1⅔ innings. Scott Tucker relieved and faced 6 batters, all of whom scored as the Lions took a 13-2 lead.
Four York pitchers, all juniors, combined to allow 12 hits and 8 walks and hit three batters.
"Those first 18 games we had good pitching," Kalal said. "And the last eight games our pitching has not been there.
"Our young pitchers - I can't even use that anymore because we're 26 games into the season - but they've got to understand that they've got to have a purpose with every single pitch they throw.
"We weren't fooling anybody today and that's baseball. It's an unfair game."
Chiappetta needed 33 pitches to get out of the first inning, though he was a little unlucky. He uncorked a wild pitch while striking out Justin Williams, who reached base on what should have been the third out.
That loaded the bases for R.J. Cruz, whose bad-hop single went over the second baseman's head and scored 2 runs to give the Lions (17-4, 10-3) a 3-0 lead.
The Dukes still had hope when they scored 2 runs off Lyons sophomore Grant Leader, an Illinois commit who hurled 3 innings to improve to 5-0.
Nick Lee drew a two-out walk, Mike Bernal singled and Chiappetta walked to load the bases. Joe Jaeger then hit a sharp grounder to short that took a wicked hop and went off the shortstop's glove to score 2 runs.
But Leader struck out the next hitter to end the threat and got out of a two-on, one-out jam in the second.
"It's a very difficult game and it can go good for you for a few weeks at a time and then all of a sudden (the fates) can just leave you," Kalal said. "We're in a funk right now and we've got to try to figure it out between this week and next week before playoffs start so we can try and make a little bit of a run in the playoffs."