Parkland High School Baseball

Can you say Streak?  Well, after a game where it looked like Parkland was going to take the lead versus Easton until the weather stopped the game prior to it being declared complete and after a nice win against the high scoring Freedom team, the Trojans knew that they were in for a battle against highly rated Hazleton.    The lefty from Hazleton had some good publicity about him and he looked like he would be difficult to hit against.   However, the game turned out to be one of the more enjoyable games of the year.   Starting pitcher Bryce Ratliff pitched as if he had a “fast pass” to get through each inning.   His low pitch count for the beginnings helped to drive this magical performance.  Bryce was constantly around the plate and let his strong defense cast behind him make all the plays.   Ratliff pitched the entire 7 innings on this fast paced game.   He only gave up 2 hits and 0 earned runs in Parkland’s resounding 9 to 1 win over Hazleton.   The game started off as it would be a tight game as the hard throwing lefty from the Mountain City was almost out of the inning with 2 outs and one walk.  However, Luke Meehan was a hitting machine today.   I don’t know if is that Luke’s bat gets hot when the weather gets hot or that he just hits well against lefty’s but h echanged the complexion of the game with a shot to right center field to score the swift Taiki Horiguchi.    One run was nice, but Kevin Santos wanted more and his line drive to right put 2 runners on board with the hope for more.   A walk toTy Tremba followed by a single to left by Will Meeker gave the Trojans a comfortable 3 to 0 lead.   The way that Ratliff was pitching, this is all he needed.   

Just about every starter for Trojans got at least one hit with several getting 2.  Tremba, Donmoyer, Meeker, Ratliff (2 hits with a double), Santos (2 hits), Meehan (2hits) all having nice games  After 3 innings of play they knocked out the lefty so Hazleton went to the bullpen and then the team really kept on hitting.  Luke Meehan crushed a ball over the left fielders head and not many parks could contained this hit.   Several notable observers said that the ball would have gone over the Varsity fence.    Others said that only Yellowstone and the JV field could have contained this shot to left.    The hit got the team excited.   The 3rd ball he hit was further but the leftfielder was playing so deep he was able to easily track the next deep ball that the freshmen hit.    The defense was really solid as right fielder Andrew Nguyen made 3 nice catches and Taiki Horiguchi controlled everything in center.  Left Fielder Jake Donmoyer controlled left and caught a ball as well as  driving in a run late in the game.    The team was hotter than they have been all year and the team looks to be gelling as the season hits its prime.

The Trojan 9 is starting to look good, have fun and win some games.   With 4 games next week, it will be another competitive week for the Trojans.