Nottingham’s Nick Houghton delivers to the plate against Hamilton West. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Apr. 17: Scoring 12 runs usually would constitute an offensive explosion, but that wasn’t actually the case for Nottingham’s baseball team Monday.
Yes, the Northstars took a 12-1 win over Hamilton West in a CVC Valley Division game, but they only garnered six hits. One of them was a pop-up that should have been caught, as Hamilton committed six errors.
Nottingham played successful small ball and executed fundamentals to top Hamilton West. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
What Nottingham (5-3, 2-0 Valley) did best was run the bases aggressively and play small ball. David Scott, Josh Sikorski, Phil Rojek and Brien Cardona all laid down successful sacrifice bunts, with Rojek’s plating a run on a safety squeeze.
Winning pitcher Nick Houghton and Sikorski each had a single, double and two RBI but other than that it was a lot of walks and errors.
“We pitch, we run the bases and we play defense almost every game,” Stars coach Jim Maher said. “We’ve gotta just keep working with our hitters. What we have is what we have. There ain’t no going down to Lehigh Valley and pulling up some guys. This is what we’ve got and we’ve gotta have some guys just figure it out.”
Nottingham 2nd basemen Brien Cardona makes the toss to first for the out. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
The Stars got another well-pitched game from Houghton (3-0), who allowed three hits and struck out 10 over six innings before Rojek pitched the seventh. Houghton started slowly, which was a concern to Maher. He allowed two hits and a hit batsmen in the first two innings and Hamilton (3-4, 0-2) took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second on Shane Hoffman’s RBI single.
“Early on it didn’t seem like he had much life on his fastball, his breaking ball was a little flat but they both got better as the game went on,” Maher said. “I think (pitching coach) Mike (Petrowski) helps him a little bit with some of those things.”
“The first couple innings I wasn’t really driving off the mound and getting over my front side,” Houghton said. “It’s hard for that off-speed pitch to work. Once I found my mechanics, it started to snap off with late movement and they couldn’t hit it.”
Hamilton catcher Kyle Harrington attempts to scoop a low throw during a play at the plate. Photo by Michael A. Sabo.
Houghton helped his own cause in the top of the fourth. After Adam Drosos retired the first nine batters he faced, Tom McParland greeted the Hornet with a leadoff single. He eventually scored on a Houghton double, and Houghton scored what proved to be the winning run on Sikorski’s single.
As Nottingham added to its lead, it lifted Houghton even further.
“As a starting pitcher that’s big-time when your team comes up, gets some runs and cushions you a little bit,” he said. “That really picks you up a lot more and gives you that extra boost of energy.”
