ORANGE — If Junior Jacob Berry was nervous at all for his first start of the 2018 season, he didn’t show it.
Yes, his team lost 11-2 and Berry gave up five runs on 10 hits, but the righty did show a lot of positives on Tuesday. He stranded 10 runners throughout his five innings, including working out of a two-out bases loaded jam in the fifth inning by forcing Frontier’s Connor Waitkus to fly out to left field.
“I was trying to set the tone,” said Berry following Tuesday’s game. “I was just trying to get the win. Every single time out there, I’m trying to help out the team, get a win and we couldn’t really get the bats going but we’ll get them next time.”
Berry worked himself out of several tough situations. In the first inning, Berry loaded the bases on three straight singles. With the bases loaded and no outs, he struck out Frontier’s Kiernan Freeman looking. Frontier then scored one run on a sacrifice fly to left, but Berry forced another fly out to end the inning giving up only one run.
“He knows how to do well under pressure,” said battery mate Will Peredina. “That’s a good quality to have, I think.”
He left two runners on stranded in the third and fourth innings as well. With the bases loaded and nobody out in the fourth inning, Berry created a double play on a ground ball back to the mount. With two outs and runners on second and third, Berry got Waitkus to fly out to left to get out of the inning untouched.
“That showed a lot of what he could do,” said Mahar coach Art Billings.
Without velocity as his strong suit, Berry has to figure out ways to generate outs rather thinking in terms of striking every batter out. Part of that approach becomes about hitting corners rather than blowing fastballs by each hitter.
“I can’t throw 90 (miles per hour), so I have to go inside and outside and make sure I’m hitting the corners,” said Berry. “I couldn’t get a few calls, but it happens.
When pitching, Berry trusts his catcher, Peredina, to work him through each at-bat, trusting him to call each pitch. When talking through his approach, Berry even used “we” rather than “I.”
“Will calls the shots,” said Berry. “Before we go out there, we say ‘OK, what do we want to do, what do we want to be throwing.’ If we want to lay off a pitch or use more of a curveball this inning or use a slider more, it’s more of like that, where we have our game plan going into the game.”
Peredina likes how Berry can throw a lot of different pitches, giving the duo a lot to work with throughout each start.
“You feel like you can mix it up a lot,” said Peredina. “He has good command over his pitches.”
Now that Berry has completed his first start of the season, he can go back and readjust things before he makes his next.
And since Berry was still effective despite the loss, it might not take much the next time he takes the mound.