Red Raiders’ pitcher gets best of Mountain Cats

By MIKE MASTOVICH
The Tribune-Democrat

May 16, 2008 11:46 pm

— The Pitt-Johnstown baseball team had several opportunities to dent highly touted Shippensburg left-hander Matt Wright on Friday night at Point Stadium.
But the Mountain Cats left 12 runners on base, with eight of those in scoring position.
Wright, a potential top-five round draft pick who throws in the low 90’s, withstood the multiple threats while throwing 128 pitches in seven innings.
The Red Raiders won 11-1 during the second day of the NCAA Division II North Atlantic Regional in Johnstown.
“He had six walks. When you go against a pitcher like Wright, if you don’t take advantage of that you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage,” UPJ coach Todd Williams said. “It was the tale of two teams. When they had runners in scoring position, they got the hit. When we had runners in scoring position, we didn’t. We let them off the hook every inning.”
The PSAC Western Division Pitcher of the Year, Wright struck out 10 and walked six while scattering four hits.
His career total of 330 strikeouts is a Shippensburg record.
“They had a lot of base runners,” Wright said. “We’ve been working on my two-seam fastball lately and I was getting it to dive a little bit tonight. Whenever they had guys on, we were just throwing that and getting them to hit ground balls. My infielders helped me out of jams.”
Fourth-seeded UPJ (36-18-1) will play sixth-seeded Kutztown (31-25) at 3 p.m. today at the Point. Fifth-seeded Shippensburg (36-23) will meet top-seeded West Chester (43-14) at 11 a.m.
If UPJ wins that game, the Cats will play again tonight.
Shippensburg and West Chester each are 2-0. UPJ and Kutztown are 1-1 in the double-elimination tournament.
Third baseman Rick Shumway ripped a two-run triple past a diving right fielder Dan Mangini in the bottom of the first to get the Raiders started.
Then, Kasey Kuhns opened the bottom of the second with a three-bagger into the right-center gap. He scored on Sean Killian’s single up the middle.
The Raiders added five unearned runs in the fourth to lead 8-0.
“The last two games our offense has been huge,” Wright said. “From a pitching standpoint, that makes it that much easier to go out and throw.”
UPJ stranded eight base runners through four innings, with five of those in scoring position. In all, UPJ struck out 14 times.
The Cats finally scored on Wright in the top of the sixth, but still stranded three more runners.
Chris Turka led off with a walk, and pinch-hitter Nick Barbera reached on an error.
Dan DelSignore’s two-out single off the wall in left plated Turka.

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