After conquering the WVIAC North Division in the regular season and earning a one seed in the conference tournament, the Griffins look to win their first ever conference baseball title when the games begin on May 6 at Pitt-Johnstown.
By Sean Maiolo
Business/Ad Manager
After conquering the WVIAC North Division in the regular season and earning a one seed in the conference tournament, the Griffins look to win their first ever conference baseball title when the games begin on May 6 at Pitt-Johnstown.
The Griffins won the division crown on Apr. 24 after junior righty, Brian Warheit, pitched a complete game shutout over Wheeling Jesuit, striking out eight while allowing only seven baserunners. Senior catcher, Pat Trettel, led the offense with a three run triple in the bottom of the seventh.
Warheit’s performance was emblematic of the pitching staff’s consistent strong play all season. Although their bats have been inconsistent for much of the year, the Griffins’ pitching has allowed them to stay in most of their games and come out on the right side of the box score 30 times.
“My biggest thing is just throwing strikes, keeping my pitch count low and making them hit the ball,” said Warheit. “Our philosophy since the beginning of the year has been to throw strikes, make routine plays on defense and make key hits in key situations.”
“What’s carried us all year has been our pitching,” said head coach Marc Marrizaldi.
“We have five or six guys that rotate among the starters and about three or four guys we’ve been using out of the bullpen pretty consistently.”
Even the team’s position players admit that without the consistent pitching, the Griffins’ would not be in a position to make a run at the conference title.
“I think we have a great variety of pitchers that do different things to keep hitters off balance,” said sophomore infielder Nick Erminio. “A lot of guys use the fastball and location to help spot up hitters, and other guys use their curveball and off-speed to keep hitters off balance.”
The team’s defense has also factored into the pitchers putting up strong numbers game in and game out. Many on the staff pitch to contact, and making the routine and occasionally spectacular plays in the field has been essential to winning games.
“The pitching and the defense work together really well,” said sophomore outfielder, Nate Defilippi. “The pitchers really throw to contact and the defense makes all the routine plays and keeps it nice and quick.”
In their division clinching win, however, the Griffins were held scoreless in eight of the nine innings. That discrepancy at the plate has been one of the few drawbacks that Marrizaldi said the team needs to straighten out in order to advance in the postseason.
“With our guys, it’s just trying to keep them aggressive at the plate and trying to control their mental aspect of hitting more than the physical,” he noted. “When our guys are confident we seem to be a pretty dangerous team on offense. That confidence has been kind of coming and going all year and we’re just trying to maintain that with those guys.”