Joel Hammond
The Chronicle-Telegram
LORAIN — With players from points near and far, summer-league baseball teams often are good places to find good team chemistry.
With little else to do but bond with teammates and play baseball, friendships quickly are formed and players can feed off each other.
Prospect League batters beware: If the NorthCoast Knights’ pitchers keep trying to best the previous guy, you’re in for a long summer.
Alex Sherrod, Dave Denneman and Brad Goldberg combined on a five-hitter as the Knights continued their stellar pitching in a 3-0 victory Wednesday over the Butler BlueSox. With the win, NorthCoast avenged a
2-0, opening-night loss at Butler, and improved to 3-4 on the young season.
“Any time (the pitchers) want to one-up a (five)-hit shutout, I’m all for that,” said Knights coach Andy Jarvis, whose pitching staff has had one truly bad day, a 13-6 loss to Slippery Rock in the team’s second game. “Other than that game, we’ve pitched awesome. You can’t expect zeroes every night, but they’re pitching well and the bats are starting to come around.”
Jarvis wanted Sherrod to pitch and hit Wednesday, so Sherrod started, gave up two hits in two innings and moved to designated hitter. Denneman followed with six innings of three-hit ball to earn the victory.
Denneman lasted 22/3 innings in that loss to Slippery Rock, but came back impressively; all three BlueSox hits against him were singles.
“(Against Slippery Rock), I wasn’t 100 percent comfortable,” said Denneman, a sophomore at Butler University. “I worked on my mechanics since then, and we’re getting more comfortable with each other. None of the pitchers wants to be the outcast, the guy who doesn’t pitch well.”
Said Jarvis: “(Denneman) wasn’t sharp that night, but for him to jump back like that, it was very promising.”
The Knights scratched out single runs in the first and fifth thanks to their work on the bases: In the first, NorthCoast tallied an unearned run after Greg Zebrack, who wreaked havoc in a weekend homestand from the No. 9 spot, led off with a single, stole second and scored when Butler second baseman Aaron Ordy couldn’t handle Kirk Singer’s grounder to second.
Former Amherst standout Evan Melendez reached on a bunt single with one out in the fifth, stole second and scored on Evan Mistich’s two-out, RBI single.
“The fast guys have the green light, and we’ve talked about running,” Zebrack said. “We’re seeing a lot of the catchers not being able to throw us out, and if you can get into scoring position, the pitcher’s mind-set changes. The pressure shifts to him.”
In the eighth, John Spatola, in his first game since joining the Knights from Boston College, pinch hit for left fielder Rob Moir and doubled to the wall in right field to drive in Mistich for the Knights’ third run.
Knights closer and Beachwood native Brad Goldberg, in his third impressive performance, struck out the side in the ninth to earn his second save.

Notable

After starting each of the Knights’ first six games, Kevin Roundtree, a freshman from Southern Cal, got his first rest. Lowe, a sophomore from Cleveland State and Sandusky Perkins High School, started behind the plate and went 0-for-4, reaching on an error in the sixth. Initial plans are for Lowe to stick around for just a few days. Lowe started nine games a freshman for the Vikings, hitting .250. This season, he batted .333, with six homers and 28 RBI in 34 starts for the Vikings.
♦ The Knights committed no errors for the first time this season.
Contact Joel Hammond at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.

Need help? Email Us.