After their third straight loss to Enterprise on Tuesday, a game in which Foothill was held hitless, the Cougars (13-4) responded with two dominant wins to finish out the Jim Morely Baseball Classic on Wednesday, April 8.
First up was Central Valley. The Cougars handled business easily against the Falcons (10-6-1), winning that matchup 10-0 behind six innings of shutdown pitching from junior Colton Douglas.
Douglas surrendered just two hits while walking one and striking out 12 batters, the most strikeouts Douglas has recorded in a game so far this season. He leads the Cougars in strikeouts with 41 on the year.
He also drove in two of the Cougars’ 10 runs on a double and sac fly.
Senior captain Blake Schwerdt took the mound for the Cougars’ second game of the day against Etna and led Foothill to a dominant 13-2 win over the Lions (5-7).
Schwerdt has been tearing it up at the plate and on the mound this season. He boasts a sub-one ERA and racked up 10 strikeouts against Etna to bring his season total to 38.
“I’m throwing the best I have in a while on the mound and I’m hitting the best I have in a while,” Schwerdt said. “My fastball felt like it’s really coming out the hand well, feels like it’s got some velo behind it, and the slider‘s been working well for me.”
Adding in Kayden Williams’ 12 strikeouts against Enterprise and Kevin Garner Jr.’s one strikeout in relief and the Cougars racked up a total of 35 strikeouts in their three games at the Jim Morely Classic.
“I think our three starters are very good, especially with Kayden and Blake having the velocity and me, typically pitching in the second game, mixing in the off-speed stuff,” Douglas said. “Especially in league, it really sets the teams off balance.”
Each of the three starting pitchers throw a four-seam fastball, curveball, changeup and slider with Schwerdt mixing in a two-seam fastball.
Most importantly, each pitcher is capable of forcing swings and misses and inducing weak contact. In addition to their 35 strikeouts, the starting rotation surrendered just eight hits in the three games at the tournament.
Foothill manager Todd Buck said one of the most important traits of a solid outing is confidence. When his pitchers have confidence, they are more willing to attack hitters and get ahead in counts.
“The biggest thing for our guys is to get ahead early, and then they are able to utilize all their pitches,” Buck said. “Our guys are also not afraid to throw their secondary pitches behind in counts and that can be really effective with high school hitters. They’re used to seeing fastballs in fastball counts, so our guys did a good job of mixing it up and keeping guys off balance.”
That philosophy was especially helpful for Douglas on Wednesday, as Douglas relies heavily on his slider and off-speed pitches.
“My slider was definitely working; I had full confidence in it,” Douglas said. “Even when I’m down in the count, I feel like I could go back to that pitch and get back into the at bat.”
Douglas did his job, and his defense backed him up.
However, the pitching has been dominant from the start. It was even dominant when the Cougars lost their four games this season. The hitting, however, started to come back around on Wednesday.
The Cougars held opponents to under five runs in each of their four losses, but they were shutout in four of the three games.
“We saw some good pitching and then I think we started reading a lot about ourselves and got a little bit complacent, changed our approach a little,” Buck said.
Foothill was still making good contact with the ball — they hit a few balls to the warning track against Enterprise — but the Cougars finally saw them drop against Central Valley and Etna.
On Wednesday, the Cougars notched 20 hits and scored 23 runs between their two wins. Schwerdt had two hits against CV and Johnny Morales, Bill Duchi and Braydon Craig each ripped three hits against Etna.
It is sure to give the Cougars some confidence heading into a three-game series against Pleasant Valley next week.
The Cougars will face the Vikings (8-5) twice on Tuesday in Chico before hosting PV on Friday.
“I knew we were going to be a really good team and we’re going to have a chance at winning a section title,” Schwerdt said. “We just need to feel good and keep rolling; One game at a time.”
Brett Abrams is a sports reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. He covers high school and local sports in the Redding area. Reach out to Brett with any sports tips or news on X (formerly Twitter) @brabrams_ or by email at Brett.Abrams@Redding.com. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Foothill baseball bounces back from no-hit loss with all-around dominance
Reporting by Brett Abrams, Redding Record Searchlight / Redding Record Searchlight
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