The Metuchen High School baseball team improved to 12-8 on the year with a 6-2 win over Bernards High School over the weekend. The win was the team’s seventh in its last eight games.
Starting pitcher Chris Mosca earned the victory in just his first start at the varsity level. Mosca earned the start due to his impressive relief appearance against Roselle Catholic earlier in the week. Mosca entered the Roselle Catholic game with runners on second and third and nobody out. After hitting the first batter he faced, Mosca went on to strike out the next three batters to get the Bulldogs out of a jam and aid the team to an 8-5 victory.
Against Bernards, Mosca went six innings before handing the ball to Jack Rems for the save. Mosca scattered five hits, struck out three, and allowed three runs in his first varsity win.
“Chris came in and did a nice job in a tough spot against Roselle Catholic and really earned the chance to start against Bernards,” Metuchen head coach Sean Economou said. “He handled himself well and did a nice job.”R
ems also came through for the Bulldogs offensively. With his team down 2-0, Rems hit a solo homer in the fifth inning to put his team on the board. Metuchen would rally for four funs in the sixth to take the lead for good. Metuchen’s Mike Jachim and Mike Durnin also had big games for the team offensively. Durnin hit an important RBI single in the fourrun sixth while Jachim finished with a pair of hits and two RBIs.
Jachim was also instrumental in the team’s win over Sayreville last week. In the Bulldogs’ 6-1 victory, Jachim threw a complete-game masterpiece in which he needed just 65 pitches to retire 21 batters.
“Mike is a contact pitcher,” Economou said. “He pitched to contact against Sayreville and got 18 ground-ball outs. He went out there and threw strikes. He located his fastball well and mixed in a two-seamer. To need only 65 pitches and to get 18 of 21 outs on the ground is almost unrealistic.”
J
achim allowed
just three hits and struck out three. Sayreville’s lone run was unearned.
“It was one of the best pitching performances I’ve seen in a while,” Economou said. “The best I had seen in a seven-inning game was 73 pitches a couple
hot streak
of years ago.”
Metuchen will hope to get some more strong pitching from its staff when the state tournament begins this week. The 10th-ranked Bulldogs were scheduled to open tournament play Monday against No. 7 Perth Amboy Tech. The team will look to do a better job of plating base runners than it did in last week’s Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament loss to South Plainfield. Against South Plainfield, Metuchen stranded 11 runners, nine of whom were in scoring position in the 6-3 loss.
After the state game on Monday, the Dogs will host Edison for a 7 p.m. game tonight. Should Metuchen get past Perth Amboy Tech, it will close the week on the road against No. 2 Dunellen.
“At the time we qualified for the state tournament, we were .500,” Economou said. “We’ve been on a nice roll, and it’s too bad the seedings are based on winning percentage. Now, no matter how far we go in the state tournament, we will never get a home game.”