Smackover duo highlights dominant pitching efforts
In 1938, Johnny Vander Meer became a baseball immortal by becoming the first and still only pitcher to date to throw consecutive no-hitters.
When Smackover resumes play next week, whoever draws the starting assignment for the Bucks against Rison will be taking aim at the team's third straight no-hitter after Chase Brumley accomplished the feat in a 2-0 win against Dumas and Jacob Eubanks threw a no-hitter of his own in a 17-1 win over McGehee.
Those performances came on the heels of El Dorado's Justin Dumas throwing a perfect game and Junction City's Jacob Orr throwing a no-hitter.
There have also been two one-hitters thrown with Junction City's Gabe Richard and Parkers Chapel's Caleb Barnes turning in sterling performances of their own.
If there has been one certainty about March, it's been that pitchers have taken to the spotlight with their efforts.
“It's the first time in my career that I've had back-to-back no-hitters thrown in my program,” Smackover coach Josh Wesson said. “I've had some no-hitters thrown, but to go back-to-back nights, it just says some
thing about the kids' work ethics. They worked really hard all winter.”
Against Dumas, Brumley dominated, racking up 13 strikeouts while issuing two walks. He needed to be.
Dumas' Jase Bishop allowed a first-inning run, but kept the Bucks at bay until the sixth when Smackover added another run to give Brumley some breathing room.
“He threw very well,” Wesson said of Brumley's performance. “We struggled at the plate that night. Our approaches weren't real disciplined, and I do want to give credit to Dumas' left-handed pitcher that they threw. They threw a sophomore and he kept us off-balance pretty well.
“It was the same story of the year. The kids knew Brumley was dealing on the mound, and we just kept waiting and waiting and waiting and we were able to scratch out a few runs.
“They just have a lot of confidence whenever he's on the mound because so far this season, he's done a great job of keeping batters off-balance and attacking the strike zone. He pitched very well like he has all year and I'm proud of the way he performed.”
It's been said that if a team has no success early against a pitcher, they may not have any success at all.
In Brumley's case, he labored through a 22-pitch first inning, but after emerging unscathed, he settled down and went the distance finishing with less than 80 pitches despite having 13 strikeouts.
“What we've seen with Chase is whenever he's on, he actually struggles in the first inning,” Wesson said. “I don't mean necessarily giving up hits or anything like that. I think he threw somewhere in the mid-70s for his pitch count, and he threw 22 pitches in the first inning. You know what you're going to get with him.
“He's a competitor. He does a great job of making adjustments pretty quickly. The other night against Dumas, we looked up and he was at the 20-pitch mark in the first inning. With all of the pitch count rules, he's one of those guys that has to go deep in the game for us, but he was able to settle down and we quickly saw that he made the adjustment that he needed. He did what he needed to do, and he dominated the rest of the game. He threw very well.”
Wesson said the reason Brumley was so efficient was because of his command.
“There was a span there where he struck out like seven in a row, and I would say five of the seven were three-pitch strikeouts,” Wesson said. “He's learned how to command all of his pitches, and he understands what the correct 0-2 pitch is.
“He's learned how to perfect that craft and he does a good job of throwing that 0-2 pitch to where it may be a couple of inches off the plate and if he doesn't swing it's going to be a ball, but at the same time, the batter is thinking, ‘This guy has been dealing all day. I have to swing at it because he's been around the strike zone.' He gets them chasing on some pitches that may be out of the zone, but they are quality out-of-the-zone pitches.
“He had several quick innings. Later in the game, they tried smallball to get some things going, and he's a great athlete just like Jacob. They tried to bunt two in a row, and he fielded his position and threw the guys out. He had a great performance.”
But while there was plenty of drama in Brumley's performance, the Bucks quickly overcame an early 1-0 deficit with nine runs in the bottom of the first to give Eubanks a sizable cushion to work with.
Eubanks, who signed with Arkansas Rich Mountain, struck out three and didn't issue any walks.
“Jacob threw well to follow Chase,” Wesson said. “His velo(city) was up again. He had all of his pitches working. He knew early in the game that it was going to be a comfortable game for him. It gave him even more confidence. McGehee struggled on the mound. They went through three or four pitchers and we were able to get some big innings. He threw very well, and I'm excited to see him on the mound again because it just seems like every time he goes out there, he throws harder and harder. He's getting stronger every outing.”
Wesson said there has been some gamesmanship between the Bucks' pitchers to continue to top each other's performances.
“I said it unknowingly, but after the game Chase threw, after we had our huddle, we were up the line meeting and I told the kids, ‘Chase, great performance, Jacob, you're going to follow it up with a no-hitter of your own tomorrow.' He just gave me a look and nodded his head, and he went out and did it,” Wesson said. “There's some gamesmanship there, which is something you like to see. Then you take (Sawyer) Cropper and throw him in the mix. Cropper had a great outing against Junction City.
“It's a fun time to be on our pitching staff right now. Those guys do want to one-up each other. They're pitching very well and we're playing good defense behind them. The past couple of games, we had a couple of errors, but they're trusting their defense. It's given me a little bit of a heart attack at times offensively.
“I knew with our youth and how young we were that we were going to have spurts offensively where we really showed our age, but it just seems like everybody is confident that between our pitching and our defense, they know that the offense will come along and we're on a pretty good run right now after dropping the first two games of the season.”