All about process

Wood fashions one-hitter as Pennsville run-rules Woodstown for first win of the season

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

PENNSVILLE – Listening to Pennsville baseball coach Matt Karr talk about the way the Eagles go about their business is a lot like listening to Nick Saban when Alabama ruled the football world.

It’s all about the process. Trust in it, leave the “rat poison” alone, and the wins will follow. 

On Wednesday, the process merged with senior pitcher Luke Wood’s sharpest outing of the season and together it produced a 10-0, five-inning win over Woodstown for the Eagles first victory of the season.

“The Pennsville baseball team showed up, not just Luke Wood, it was the whole team,” Wood said. “I think as a team we really came together today a lot more than we were our first two games.

“It was kind of the atmosphere today and the whole makeup of our team. We didn’t really feel like us our first two games. It wasn’t easy to start 0-2 but we kind of put that as a chip on our shoulder and worked really hard all week.””

The Eagles (1-2) lost their season opener at Pitman and didn’t feel good about any part of it. They played better in their next game against Gloucester Catholic, but lost that one, too.

“We all firmly believe that opening day game was not indicative of who we are and how our season is going to go,” Karr said. “We talked about that together as a team. It is what it is and on to the next game; the No. 1 team in the state rolls in and you’ve got to saddle up and go play. We didn’t win, but we came out and battled, played much better baseball.

“We talk a lot about process, how we’re doing things rather than what’s on the scoreboard. Usually, if your process is good, the scoreboard will be in your favor at the end. So, we focus how we play baseball. We have to play our game every day no matter what. We have to handle our business. Trust the process.”

The Eagles certainly trust in Wood, who gives them the confidence to play anybody in the state when he’s on the mound. He spun a one-hitter Wednesday, allowed only four base-runners and faced just three batters over the minimum for five innings.

It was his longest outing on the mound since last May and the longest outing with the fewest hits of his four-year varsity career.

He struck out nine, including the last six in a row, and retired the last 11 batters he faced. The only hit he allowed was Blake Bialecki’s slow-rolling single to third in the first inning. He went to three balls on only three hitters – and struck out two of them.

He threw 79 pitches and was going to come out if the Eagles hadn’t walked it off with four runs in the fifth because the coaches were trying to keep their ace to 80 pitches. Of course, had the game been tighter, he might’ve stayed longer.

In his start against Pitman the McDaniel College-bound Wood gave up three hits and two runs over four innings. He struck out seven, walked two and hit two. He threw 72 pitches. The Eagles were down 2-1 when he was lifted and eventually lost 7-2.

“I think my composure and how I carried myself and just went about each at bat,” Wood said, explaining the difference in his two starts. “Against Pitman I was kind of letting myself get lost and sped up. Today, regardless what happened I stayed very (focused) and pitched my game and let it work.”

“I think Luke will tell you he wasn’t as sharp as he would’ve liked to have been (against Pitman), although I still thought he pitched well enough to win that game,” Karr said. “Today he came out, didn’t overthrow. He could definitely throw harder than he did today but he pitched really well today, sequenced really well and his breaking pitches he was spotting wherever he wanted. Counts didn’t matter today, he was throwing his game, he was locked in and when a pitcher gets like that he’s hard to hit. Especially Luke.”

The Eagles gave their ace a four-run lead in the bottom of the first. Mason O’Brien scored the first run when the Wolverines threw Wood’s sacrifice bunt into right field. Chase Burchfield delivered a two-run opposite-field single two batters later and Cohen Petrutz had an RBI double.

They added single runs in the third and fourth on RBI singles by Jeff Wagner and Logan Streitz, and walked it off with four in the fifth capped by Burchfield’s bases-loaded single.

The Wolverines have the distinction of facing the two top pitchers in Salem County on the road in their last two games – both left-handers both named Luke – and met with similar results. Last week, Schalick’s Luke Pokrovsky fashioned a five-inning perfect game with 11 strikeouts against them. Neither Luke let a ball out of the infield.

They felt behind in the first inning In both run-rule losses – 10-0 against Schalick, 4-0 Wednesday – and trying to make up a deficit of any size with those pitchers on the mound is a tall order. 

“Luke works a little differently than the other Luke,” Woodstown coach Marc DeCastro said. “The Schalick Luke has more of an ability to throw it by you pretty much any time he wants and then he’s got a breaking ball that kind of acts like a splitter so it’s difficult. Luke (Wood) works a little bit more, in, out, up, down, changes speeds. He can ramp it up when he needs to.

“It’s good to see those pitchers, but it’s not good to have zero runs in 10 innings.”

It doesn’t get any easier for the Wolverines. Later today they face a Gloucester City team that beat them on a seventh-inning walk-off in last year’s South Jersey Group I championship game. The matchup is intriguing just because of the recent history, but, really, with what they’ve gone through the last two games it doesn’t much matter who is in the other dugout.

“I couldn’t care less who it is tomorrow,” DeCastro said. “We just lost two games in a row 10 and 11 to nothing, so we have to bounce back really quickly against whoever it is and try to get a lead and learn how to play with a lead and try to get back on track.”