Eagles Baseball Team Has Eyes On Playoffs
Eagles Baseball Team Has Eyes On Playoffs
Boys Baseball Program Improves Records Nearing Season Mid-Point
Photos / Rich Rumfola
Nearing the mid-point of the 2023 season, the Ellicottville Eagles baseball team improved its record to 2-4 overall and 1-2 in Cattaraugus Chautauqua Athletic Association Division 3 league play with a 9-3 victory over visiting Hinsdale on Saturday, April 22.
With a solid core of mostly upperclassmen playing strong defense behind him, freshman pitching sensation Cameron Mendell used 101 pitches to get through all seven innings of the first complete-game victory of his young career - striking out 10 batters and holding the visitors scoreless through the first five innings, as the Eagles jumped out to a 3-0 first-inning lead and never looked back.
While Mendell was shutting down and shutting out the visiting offense, Eagles batters were giving him all the run support he would need - as they built an insurmountable, 9-0 lead through five innings.
“He’s got a rare talent, for sure,” commented Ellicottville Coach Chris Mendell on his young pitcher/leadoff batter. “He’s another one of those athletes, it just doesn’t matter what he does, whatever he picks up he’s going to be good at it and certainly baseball is his best sport.”
Because pitchers are on a strict pitch count mandated by Section VI Athletics, and because all teams will play three-four games per week for the rest of the regular season, high school coaches cannot rely on one pitcher to get them through all those innings and are compelled to develop a core pitching staff of (at the very least) four dependable arms.
If you asked Mendell, he’d like that number to be closer to six competent pitchers, so from now until the playoffs start in about a month, he’s going to be focusing much of his attention on the skills progression of his pitching staff.
“Our season’s going to come down to how well our pitching staff develops,” Mendell explained. “I’d like to get more strikeouts, but I’m not as concerned about getting more strikeouts as I am on cutting down on walks.”
Pitchers are allowed to throw a pre-determined ‘maximum’ number of pitches, depending on how many nights’ rest they had following their last pitching appearance. Recognizing the fact that pitchers get stronger over the course of a season, the maximum amount of pitches goes up twice over the course of the season. For example, in the month of March, pitchers are allowed to throw as many as 85 pitches in a single game but then are required to have four nights’ rest before being available to pitch again. In April, that number goes up to 105 pitches and then bumps up again to 125 max pitches per game in May and June.
Mendell explained how the pitch count rules puts an added premium on a pitcher’s ability to throw strikes and record strikeouts. “On the pitch count, if you’re walking guys, that means you’re throwing pitches that aren’t getting guys out and the pitch count goes up,” he said. “So we’ve got to be more effective and efficient with our pitches to get deeper into games with the pitch count.”
Without much effort, the average fan of Major League Baseball should be able to rattle off a litany of million-dollar pitchers who walk too many batters and still struggle with control, so it’s no big leap to imagine how the same problem might plague high school athletes. However, as the days get longer and spring turns to summer, young baseball arms invariably get stronger and most get more accurate - so Mendell looks forward to the task of building a pitching staff that can win playoff games - and he still has some time to do it.
Senior flamethrower Caedon Wyatt remains the linch pin of the Eagles’ pitching staff. Wyatt started three of the six games Ellicottville played so far and has pitched to a 3.15 ERA over 13.1 innings of play. He has one win and one loss to his record and has struck out 20 of the 82 batters he has faced to this point in the season.
Offensively, Wyatt leads the team in RBI’s with seven, and hits at a .286 clip. Meanwhile, Caedon’s brother, Braylon, spends the bulk of his time at the shortstop position and is currently batting .250 with six RBI’s and five runs scored.
Both possess uncommon speed and wreak havoc on the opposing team’s defense, especially when they happen to be on base at the same time.
Aside from Caedon Wyatt and the young Mendell, junior catcher Hunter Smith has worked his way into the starting pitcher rotation for Coach Mendell, parlaying off-season effort into this season’s success.
“He spent all winter working on things and he’s figuring it out,” Mendell said of his star catcher’s progress from behind the plate to the top of the mound. “He’s developed himself to the point where now I think he’s going to be an effective pitcher for us at playoff time and definitely for next year.”
As a catcher, Mendell has nothing but praise for his junior backstop. “As far as defensive catchers go, he does a phenomenal job of controlling the game. I don’t think there’s another catcher in the area that’s better at blocking balls and receiving balls than Hunter.”
As good as Smith’s defensive skills may be, he swings a smoking-hot bat and leads the team in batting average (.350), hits (7), triples (2) and runs scored (11). If they made stolen base statistics available to the unwashed masses, they would probably reveal that Smith has also swiped the most bases of anyone on the team as well.
Anyone who has watched Ellicottville boys sports over the past school year will certainly agree that Gian Nuzzo has had a senior year to remember. He quarterbacked the football team to the Class D championships last fall, almost singlehandedly engineered an impossible comeback in the Section VI basketball semi-finals and this spring for the first time since the seventh grade, Nuzzo picked up a baseball and decided to give it a go. The result? He is the starting centerfielder for the varsity team, where he has thrown runners out at home on two separate occasions and trails only the catcher, Smith, for the team lead in batting average (.333) and runs scored (5).
“(Nuzzo) is a huge addition for us,” Mendell admitted. “He’s a guy, who when the lights are on, he performs his best - when it matters most.”
Nuzzo and the rest of the boys of summer will take to the field next at Pine Valley on Saturday, April, 29. First pitch, 11:00am.