BY DOUG McKENZIE
Staff Writer
MIGUEL JUAREZ staff South River’s Rich Forero slides safely into home during a recent scrimmage against J.P. Stevens in South River. Teams that dismiss the South River Rams as a young baseball team that’s going to struggle are in for a surprise.
At least that’s what 10th-year head coach Michael Lepore Jr. believes, as his Rams prepare to sneak up on their opponents with a mostly inexperienced but talented team.
“This is a good young team,” Lepore Jr. said. “We have limited varsity experience, but we have a lot of talent. We’re going to surprise some people.”
The Rams return just three starters from last year’s 9-15 squad, led by their ace, senior Dom DeCorso. DeCorso was on the short end of a lot of close games last year, pitching to a 3.22 ERA for the season.
“His record really didn’t indicate how well he pitched,” he said. “He pitched all the big games for us, and kept us in every game.”
Junior Dan Litz is also back, and will be the Rams’ No. 2 starter after going 1-3 last year with a 3.10 ERA.
Junior Eddie Dumas is the third starter, and is already 1-0 on the year, getting the win in Tuesday’s season-opening 11-1 win over Timothy Christian.
Senior Dan Kaminsky rounds out a pitching staff that will need to perform well as the Rams look to establish their offense early on. Although the offense certainly looked potent on Tuesday, Lepore Jr. doesn’t expect that kind of outburst to be the norm.
“We’ve struggled to score runs for a while,” the coach said. “But we bunt well, move runners over, hit and run and steal bases. We’ll have to scratch and claw for everything we get.
“Our pitching and defense will keep us in games.”
Senior catcher Mark Nevin will be in charge of handling the pitching staff, while the infield consists of Litz at first, senior Eric Linzey at second, junior Jimmy Witkowski, a returning starter, at short, and junior Matt Huff at third. Senior Mark Tutino will play first when Litz pitches, while junior Mike Rondeski backs up Linzey at second and sophomore Rich Forero backs up Witkowski.
Senior Brian Marcinczyk starts in center field, and is flanked by junior Joe Drum in left and junior James Angley in right. DeCorso and Dumas will also see time in the outfield when they’re not pitching.
Offensively, Lepore Jr. expects his more experienced players to lead the way.
“Angley is looking very good and is swinging the bat well,” the coach said. “DeCorso and Witkowski are also hitting the ball pretty well right now.”
Against Timothy Christian, Marcinczyk, Forero and Witkowski all collected two hits on the day, as the Rams blew the game open with a six-run rally in the third inning. Dumas allowed just three hits in the five-inning game.
Next up for the Rams is a game on Saturday against GMC Blue Division foe Middlesex. DeCorso will get his first start of the season against the Blue Jays, who are coming off a 10-11 season, and, like the Rams, have a lot of new faces on the roster.
While South River will be a bit of a work in progress early on, Lepore Jr. sees quite a bit of potential in this squad.
“They work hard and listen to everything I say,” he said. “They seem like they’re able to grasp a lot of things very quickly, which is important when you lack experience.”
Lepore Jr., who is assisted by Matt Desantis (varsity assistant) and Matt Musante (jayvee coach), also thinks the team’s camaraderie will be a strength.
“A lot of these guys have been playing together for a while now,” he said. “When our juniors were freshmen, they played a freshman schedule, which we don’t usually have because of enrollment. But these guys had some success as freshmen.”
Now that they’ve reached the varsity level, Lepore Jr. hopes that trend continues, as the Rams face a tough schedule once again.
The talent is there, and once the Rams get some experience under their belts, South River may be ready to be a factor in the Blue Division race.