By Dan Cleary

4/18/2008 - SCIL Teams Born to Score Runs

After starting the spring season battling below freezing temperatures and water-logged fields, this past week’s weather has been a welcome respite for the schools in the Mugs Media area.

As the temperatures have heated up so has the level of play on the baseball and softball diamonds, but the question is, have the bats in Sussex County Interscholastic League baseball play heated up too much?

Last Monday I was fortunate to have the pleasure of covering the Vernon at Pope John baseball game on the Lions’ beautiful artificial surface field. It was a little windy and it got a bit chilly as the game wore on, but by no means did the weather have any effect on the game.

Myself, and the fans who attended the game, were treated to an old-fashioned pitchers’ duel between Tyler Courter of Vernon and Mike Ham of Pope John. The game featured everything you would want in a high school baseball clash—good pitching, defense, timely hitting and great base running.

Vernon posted a 4-1 win due to a two-run dinger by catcher D.J. Manning, the first in his high school career, and some great work on the basepaths by Garret Torres, who walked, stole second and went to third on an error before scoring on a wild pitch. Courter was brilliant and worked out of a jam in the bottom of the seventh to post the complete-game win.

Ham was just as impressive, and except for the bad pitch to Manning, he pitched well enough to win on almost any other day. But as I was heading home after the game I had no idea of the offensive carnage going on in the four other SCIL games being contested. The average final score of the four other games that day was 14-5. That’s right, 14-5.

Unfortunately, the scores were not an aberration this season as the average score in the five league games played Wednesday was 13-3, which included a 20-1 win posted by Jefferson over High Point. In the over 36 league games played this season, 25 times one team scored more than 10 runs. That is incredible. The scoring margin in the SCIL is about seven runs a game and no team is immune to it.

Take Vernon, for example. After the big win over PJ, the Vikings fell to Hopatcong the next day 12-2 at the Homerdome in Hopatcong. So is the pitching down this year? Not necessarily because these high scores have been happening for the last few years, an issue that Mugs Media baseball analyst Bill Rawson pointed out the other night.

So what is behind the surge? Are the balls juiced? The players are most certainly not due to the state’s mandatory drug-testing policy, which has served as a great deterrent, in my opinion. There are several factors, according to veteran PJ coach Vin Bello, one of which has no rhyme or reason.

“It is tough to explain, and there is no other way of saying it except it is high school baseball at this time of the season,” said Bello, who is fortunate to have three fine hurlers in Ham, Mike Linskey and Will Wohland. “You can have a good pitcher going and he has a bad day and all of a sudden it is 7-0. That is the way it is.

“Scoring at this time of the year in April is always up,” he added. “But as the teams warm up, pitchers will take over again as they develop their arm strength in mid-May. Plus hitters are getting used to the warmer weather. No one can hit when it is below freezing. We scrimmaged Morris Knolls and it was 27 degrees out.”

Bello makes a good point about the weather, but I also feel there isn’t as much pitching depth in the SCIL as there used to be. But the main culprit behind the surge, in my view, is the metal bat.

First, the pitching depth. I have noticed over the years from Little League on up to high school not as many kids want to pitch. I don’t know why, but Bello said he noticed it, too.

“We do have some really good pitching in the SCIL,” said Bello. “I think I have three good ones and Jefferson, Lenape, and Sparta have some good depth, too. It is just that some of the other teams don’t have that, so when you are throwing your No. 2 or No. 3, there is a drop off.”

Bello is right when it comes to SCIL pitching. Jefferson has its ace, St. Peter’s-bound righty, Dom Macaluso, as well as, Steve D’Urso and Andrew Gallant. Alex Makowitz, Pat O’Leary and Ryan Quinn are very formidable for Sparta, while Todd Leister and Mitch Guerra of Lenape Valley are quality hurlers. But other schools have just have one consistent pitcher, like Courter for Vernon and Anthony Perretti of Hopatcong, for example.

But pitching depth might improve in the coming years if the mandatory pitch count limit in Little League has its desired effect. For years, Little League had instituted an innings limit, but it went to a pitch count recently with the hopes of protecting young arms and developing pitching talent.

With a pitch count, teams must develop more than just two pitchers in order to be successful, or even compete, at the youth level. Hopefully, this will have a trickle-down effect, but that remains to be seen and we won’t see the final results for at least 5-to-10 years.

Bello said one way to slow down the offensive juggernaut now, not only in the SCIL, but around the state, is by going to wood bats. He has been a proponent of the switch, which several states have made over the years. There are a couple of major obstacles, however, to making the change. Besides the economic issue for the schools going to wood bats, Little League is firmly against the switch, so kids who don’t play in a wood bat league at the youth level would be at a disadvantage when they hit the high school ranks if the switch is made.

“To me, I would love to have wood bats,” said Bello, who has produced numerous Division I and professional players in is tenure. “Right now, your No. 8 and No. 9 guys in the lineup can bang the ball around. That wouldn’t happen as much with a wood bat. But that’s me.”

So there is no clear-cut solution except to switch to wood bats, but that is another issue for another time. Until then, make sure you pack a meal when attending a SCIL baseball game because you might be there a while.

BEAT GOES ON---The more things change, the more they stay the same when it comes to boys tennis in the SCIL. Once again, Sparta is the top dog, and yet again, the Spartans sport the top player in the SCIL.

Freshman phenom Freddy Marcinkowski recently won the first-singles title at the SCIL Festival in what could be the first of four championships for the undefeated champ. If he wins four, he would tie former Spartan All-Stater Andrew Wang, arguably the best tennis player to come out of the SCIL.

Wang, who went 98-5 for his career and would have won 100 matches if not for an injury that kept him out at the beginning of last season, is currently playing singles and doubles for John Hopkins University in Baltimore. Wang advanced to the state singles final last year before suffering a heartbreaking 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 defeat to Ravi Yegy-Rayman of Cherry Hill East.

Marcinkowski has big shoes to fill, but he is off to a great start, plus he has a great coach to lead the way. Sparta coach Joe Fennell, who took over for Sussex County Hall-of-Famer Jeff Hughes, was an outstanding player in his own right during his days at Pope John. He went onto a great career at Fairfield University and was the Stags’ captain.

What I remember of Fennell was the great competition he received from his own teammate Jay Brupbacher. Their challenge matches for the first-singles slot were as competitive as the SCIL Festival final I remember former PJ coach Bob McNutt telling me. Brupbacher, who played first singles, went onto play at Georgetown University.

As for Marcinkowski, he will most definitely improve and get stronger as he gets older, and if he does, he will join the ranks of Wang and former Spartan greats Jason and Philson Yim as well as former Newton All-Stater Jerod Ford, who played at Penn State in the 1980s, as one of the best in SCIL history.

That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.