By SPENCER BATES
SALAMANCA — The Salamanca baseball team has maintained its perfect record on the season, adding one more tally in the win column after shutting out Clymer/Sherman/Panama 4-0 at home.
The Warriors were hot off the blocks, getting a good amount of offensive production right away. But as quickly as they got their bats going, scoring three runs in the first frame, they cooled off just as fast, recording just one hit between the second and fifth inning.
And while struggling to produce at the plate, Salamanca coach Greg Herrick was in search of an alternative method to victory. Luckily for him, a sound defensive effort paired with a mentally-resilient pitching display, provided just that.
Zach Trietley got the start on the mound for Salamanca on the day and made the most of his 5.0 innings, striking out seven batters, walking three and conceding just one hit to his opposition. But as solid as the stat line was for Trietley, in his latter innings he faced some heavy adversity with runners on the basepaths, threatening to score.
In fact, Greg Herrick made two trips to the mound to talk things over with Trietley, and after both conversations, he battled and continued to keep CSP off the scoreboard.
Cory Holleran took to the mound in relief of Trietley in the sixth inning and followed in the footsteps of the day’s starter, blanking the Wolfpack through 2.0 innings, striking out two and allowing just one hit as well.
“With Trietley, he never changes his demeanor,” Greg Herrick said. “He just goes to work. He got into some tough spots, but we had full confidence in him. You could just tell by the body language he expected to get out of it, and he did. That’s important for our younger players to see too, just that mental toughness. We’ve been preaching that, but for them to witness it and see it is bigger than anything that we can talk about. I thought that was huge. And then Cory did the same thing. We had some traffic on the bases, and he just followed suit, got out of the jams when we needed to and made some huge pitches.”
But as much as they were unable to fall for hits, CSP did manage to connect on a number of pitches throughout the affair. Luckily for Greg Herrick, his team’s defense — which he noted was made up of some younger and less experienced guys on the day — came through in a big way.
“One of the key pillars of our identity is playing good defense,” Greg Herrick said. “We had some guys that we subbed in in the fourth inning, and they made big plays in the outfield. I was proud of them, they were ready to go. Our infield defense is really starting to come together. There’s a lot of experience there and I just thought we competed. Even our young third baseman knocked down a throw from the outfield that could have scored a couple runs if it gets by him. We just ask them to compete and I think they’re doing a good job of that. We value the defensive part of the game, it’s really valuable. So as long as we keep treating the game the right way and valuing pitching and defense and doing all the little things, they’ll continue to see some amount of success.”
Salamanca’s Jacob Herrick (2) connects with a pitch. Jacob Herrick finished 2-for-3 with a run against CSP. (Spencer Bates)
In terms of the offense Salamanca was able to generate, all was courtesy of those at the top of the batting order. In the first frame, Jacob Herrick, Holleran and Trietley all scored in order. And in the bottom of the sixth, Payton Bradley — batting in the 4-spot — came across the plate on a sacrifice fly from Kruz Coustenis after recording a triple on the previous at-bat.
After the Warriors’ opening-day win over Otto-Eldred, Greg Herrick noted that while his team is young, it has a solid core of veteran leadership. In the victory over CSP, it showed.
“We keep saying that we’re young, but we have a really strong leadership group, and they’ve been through a lot in a lot of different sports, so they’ve seen just about anything that a team can throw at them,” Greg Herrick said. “From a mental toughness standpoint, our younger guys are starting to really realize that even if situations don’t go our way, we just have to keep clawing and fighting. And (our leaders) really have a good mentality, they take the younger kids under their wing. It’s not just a, ‘hey, we’re the leaders,’ they’re effective with it.”
Up next for Salamanca is another game at home. And as satisfied as he was with how his squad pulled out the victory against the Wolfpack, Greg Herrick will, presumably, hope his Warriors will be able to produce a bit more offense when they square off against Chautauqua Lake on April 7 at 5 p.m.
AT SALAMANCA
CSP 000 000 0 0 2 2
Sala. 300 001 X 4 5 3
CSP: Bryce Hinsdale (3 SO, 0 BB), Gavin Burchanowski (0 SO, 0 BB) and Max White
Sala.: Zach Trietley (7 SO, 3 BB), Cory Holleran (2 SO, 0 BB) and Payton Bradley
