The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Mendez hurls Clippers to victory over Pirates THE SCORE
Delivering on the mound, at the plate and in the field. Clearview got a complete team effort and knocked off host Rocky River, 9-4, on April 21.
Stringing together some clutch hits, the Clippers scored three runs in backto-back innings early and used the effective arm of Julian Mendez to stave off the Pirates.
Clearview got things rolling in the third with four straight hits after there were two out. The rally started with Kurly Petrov and ended with a two-run single by Jordan Tiller that gave them a 4-1 lead in the third.
“It was a good job on them because at first they were saying it looked like the ball was coming in a little weird on his curveball, so I just told myself to jump on the first pitch so you don’t have to deal with anything else,” Tiller said. “Once we got the one hit, it started rolling for us. We get put in a lot of situations like that where we have a lot of runners on base and lately we’ve been cleaning Online: See Randy Meyers’ photo gallery from the game. up the bases.”
Assistant coach Dale Kutting, who stepped into the head coaching duties for the game, said it has been nice to see that clutch hitting pay off after the Clippers had struggled to deliver in the early season.
“The big thing today was we had some timely two out hits that we broke the game open with,” Kutting said. “We didn’t have that at the beginning of the season and now we’re finally swinging the bats well and today was about our timely hitting and we got some great pitching from our freshman.”
Having seen little of Mendez, Rocky River coach Darryl Sanders told his team that with limited exposure to a young guy, they had to be ready for almost anything the youngster threw at them.
What Mendez threw was strikes.
Attacking the zone all afternoon long and allowing one run on five hits in six innings, Mendez was a thorn in the Pirate’s side. CLEARVIEW 9, ROCKY RIVER 4
“They had a lot of seeing eye hits and we knew they were going to throw a young guy at us and I tried to pre-warn my kids that you don’t know what you’re going to see and you’re going to have to make adjustments,” Sanders said. “We had a couple of other issues. We didn’t have our best lineup to start for disciplinary reasons and I don’t know if that would have helped or hurt us. Who knows? But that’s the nature of the game. We did hit it hard, just it always seemed to be right at somebody.”
Working in a mix of pitches to keep Rocky River off balance, Mendez dared the Pirates to put it in play where his defense was as sharp as ever.
“Just the inside-outside corners. I was hitting the corners and getting my pitches over the plate,” Mendez said.
“The defense really did a good job too. Gotta thank them. Just getting the defense to work, it’s the best thing.”
Now heading into the bulk of its conference schedule, Clearview is turning the corner at just the right time with games having a lot more meaning coming up.
“We’re playing well, hopefully we can keep it going with a busy week next week. We have a lot of conference games,” Kutting said. “If we get some pitching and hitting and some warm weather, we’ll be ready to play some good baseball.”