AAA No. 3 Nitro entering baseball postseason in familiar spot

NITRO, W.Va. — It’s been a new era for Nitro baseball this season under first year head coach Joe Gayda – but much of the same results.

The Strongsville, Ohio native and former Dayton outfielder took over for veteran coach Steve Pritchard after spending the 2015 season as the JV head coach. The cupboard certainly wasn’t bare for Gayda heading into his first year at the helm as the Wildcats returned seven starters from a state-runner up team.

“It’s not really starting from scratch when you have that kind of talent coming back with that kind of experience,” Gayda said. “Losing in the state championship game by a hair left a sour taste in their mouths. Our kids were itching to go since day one this year and they’ve really shown what they can do. Our record isn’t the best right now, but we’ve made a lot of improvement since the beginning of the year.”

Nitro (16-10) started the year as preseason No. 2 in the MetroNews baseball poll, but dropped as low as No. 8 with an up-and-down early schedule. Road trips to play out-of-state competition in Cincinnati and Myrtle Beach left the Wildcats with a 3-5 record on April 2.

Jacob Bradley entered this week with a 0.83 ERA on the season.
Jacob Bradley entered this week with a 0.83 ERA on the season.

Since that point, however, Nitro has continued to build momentum and ended the regular season having won six of seven.

“In our first 11 games, we had six losses and we were scoring around four runs per game,” Gayda said. “In our last 13 or 14 games, we’re scoring around eight runs per game. We’ve made some adjustments where we’ve needed to. We’ve been scoring more runs and our pitching has been where it has always been – really great.

“It’s been coming together where we need it to, we just have to go out there and do what we do well,” he continued. “We have a mature group and they recognized where they needed to improve. I think that’s why we’ve been playing better here lately.”

The Wildcats jumped from 7th back up to No. 3 this week after capturing the MSAC tournament title with wins over then-No. 3 South Charleston and rival-No. 2 Hurricane.

“Those wins show that we can hang with anyone when we’re playing well,” Gayda said. “But at the same time, we’ve been beaten by some teams that you could say we shouldn’t have gotten beaten by – but, that’s baseball.

“You don’t really play the other team, you play the ball every day,” he continued. “You can only put yourself in so much of a position for success. After that, it’s a a lot of bounces and even luck here and there. Eventually it all evens out and if you keep hitting the ball hard and having quality at-bats, things will usually workout in your favor.”

Nitro won a state tournament semifinal game in 2015 over Wheeling Park, but fell in the title game to Jefferson 2-1.
Nitro won a state tournament semifinal game in 2015 over Wheeling Park, but fell in the title game to Jefferson 2-1.

Matt Harrison (.359, 4 home runs), Andrew Stone, Jacob Bradley (3 home runs) and Matt Jewell (21 RBIs) have continued to lead the Wildcats at the plate. It’s been Bradley (0.83 ERA), Stone (1.10 ERA), Jared Hill (2.04 ERA) and now Eddie Flores getting the bulk of innings on the mound.

Nitro is matched up in Region 4, Section 2 play with Logan (12-8) and St. Albans. In all, there are six teams that have been ranked at some point this season out of Region 4 (No. 2 Hurricane, No. 3 Nitro, No. 10 Spring Valley, Logan, Cabell Midland and already-eliminated Huntington).

Winfield and Point Pleasant have also been competitive throughout the year with some key wins, while St. Albans has continued to improve.

“I don’t think there’s one of those teams that isn’t capable of advancing to the regional final and getting to the state tournament,” Gayda said. “It’s really going to be which team controls what they do well the most, who plays the ball better and who has better at-bats.”

Sectional play was scheduled to begin Thursday for the Wildcats against St. Albans.





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