Baseball: Palatine's Rajpurkar handcuffs Lake Zurich
Palatine's Shailan Rajpurkar was a time bandit Saturday.
With the wind blowing out hard at Palatine, the junior right-hander was looking to mix up the timing of his pitches. Rajpurkar was successful and kept Lake Zurich off balance to help his team to a 2-1 win in the first game of a nonconference baseball doubleheader that took less than 80 minutes.
"I just mixed up my timing and threw off their batters today," said Rajpurkar, who threw 5⅔ innings, allowing 3 hits and 1 run while striking out five.
"My defense also made some great plays behind me. I have great backup men."
Rajpurkar, who got big defensive plays from Josh Stitt, Luka Popovic and Luke Seiffert, also helped himself in the first inning.
He walked the opening batter and followed with a fielders choice thanks to play by Stitt. Rajpurkar then proceeded to pick off the runner. That play seemed to spark Rajpurkar.
"It give me a bit of confidence through the whole game," Rajpurkar said. "I knew that I could always resort to that. It feels real good to get that win."
Palatine coach Paul Belo liked what he saw from Rajpurkar.
"Shay did a tremendous job of working off of his off-speed pitches," Belo said. "The biggest thing is that he really changed his timing. I thought his timing was never the same. I think that kept them off balance."
Palatine (7-8-2) got Rajpurkar all the offense he needed in the third inning when the Pirates were able to get 3 hits and a pair of runs.
Tommy Philbin singled and went to third on a perfectly executed hit-and-run play by Eric Pecson. Philbin scored on Stitt's fielders choice and Pecson was able to come home when his brother Tyler tripped to right.
"He missed with a fastball and I was able to take it to the other side," Tyler Pecson said. "My ball carried more than I thought and when the right fielder stepped back, I knew it was going to go."
Lake Zurich was able to get on the board in the sixth when Jack Moses belted a home run to left-center to cut the lead to 2-1.
After a ground out, the Pirates turned to Ryan Dynsangco, who ended the inning. Dysangco gave up a one-out single, but then promptly picked off that runner and ended the game with a strikeout.
"They came out ready to play and we didn't," Lakee Zurich coach Rick Erickson said. "We had some baserunners get picked off and eliminated some rallies. Baserunning has been huge for us and not being able to use that part really stalled our offense."
Belo said that it is the time of the season when teams are picking up their play.
"It is no longer early baseball," Belo said "Both teams are starting to solidify their approaches."
Lake Zurich (8-4) had a much better approach at the plate in the nightcap.
The Bears banged out 17 hits in a 16-4 victory. Noah DeLuga belted a pair of homers and Tyler Snep also had a round-tripper for the Bears. DeLuga had 3 hits while Snep, James Piggott, Jack Pfeifer, Anthony Mangano, Michael Chialdikas and Sam Holtz each had 2 hits for the Bears.
Jake Andersen had 3 hits and 2 RBI for Palatine while Stitt had 2 hits.