Wheaton North pitching does it again
The deeper into the staff, the better Wheaton North’s pitching has been this week.
Doug Hayes capped a three-game DuPage Valley Conference baseball sweep of Wheaton Warrenville South with Wednesday’s 2-0 victory at Lisle’s Benedictine University.
The senior left-hander needed 89 pitches to complete a 2-hitter with 3 strikeouts and 2 walks. On the heels of strong pitching performances from Tom Colletti and Lake Bachar, Hayes came up with the Falcons’ best outing of the series.
“I’ve felt pretty good the whole season, and lately everything’s been coming together,” Hayes said. “Our pitching this year has been really good. Thomas, Lake, Sam (Nafziger) all have pitched real well. It’ll be good for playoffs. We have plenty of depth. We’re in good shape.”
Falcons senior Ryan Kent accounted for both runs in the first and fifth innings and may have saved a couple of runs with stellar defensive plays in center field. Wheaton North scored the only run it needed in the bottom of the first when Kent led off with a single, stole second, moved to third by tagging up on a flyout and came home on Colletti’s single.
Kent reached on a fifth-inning error and moved to third on singles by Jake Taschetta and Johnny Peltz. Colletti again drove in Kent, this time with a sacrifice fly.
Wheaton North (23-7, 15-6) managed nothing else against Tigers starter Connor Ostrander, who scattered 8 hits, struck out four, walked none and hit a batter. The Falcons, however, didn’t need anything more with Hayes on the mound.
“Their kid threw a great game,” said Falcons coach Dan Schoessling. “We did a good job of getting runs across when we had opportunities. We had one baserunning error that took us out of an inning, but other than that we did a good job of putting the ball in play and getting runners in scoring position.”
WW South (16-14, 11-10) didn’t have many scoring chances against Hayes, but the Tigers did put runners on first and second with no outs in the third when Ben Bach reached on an error and Kevin Giltz walked.
Mike Saccucci, however, was called out on a bunt when his bat hit the ball twice. A flyout and groundout ended the threat and maintained the 1-0 lead for the Falcons.
Hayes stranded a runner at third base to end the game, striking out the final two batters he faced.
“We were top half, which was good, but they weren’t necessarily hard groundballs,” said WW South coach Tim Brylka. “He kind of had us off-balance a little bit. Who knows what would have happened that third inning, but that was a huge play at that point in the game. That was frustrating, but that’s kind of how it’s been for us lately.”
Follow Kevin on Twitter @kevin_schmit