LeDuc tosses no-hitter as St. James baseball stifles North Myrtle Beach
St. James already had its quirky win this week.
The Sharks wanted something more definitive when the game had real meaning.
One day after St. James defeated Carolina Forest on a seventh-inning balk, pitcher Dillon LeDuc hurled a no-hitter and his team cruised to a 6-0 win over North Myrtle Beach.
The victory keeps the Sharks tied with Myrtle Beach atop the Region VII-AAA standings at 5-1, with each of those teams holding at least a two-game lead over the next-best squads in the division.
LeDuc will be on the mound when those two meet next Friday at Myrtle Beach, although it will be tough for him to top his performance against the Chiefs.
“In the first couple innings, I didn’t have my best stuff going. Then, in the fourth inning, it really started clicking for me,” LeDuc said. “I started getting on a roll. I didn’t really notice anything until the sixth inning when one of the players said something to me.”
Although the Sharks scoreboard initially flashed a North Myrtle Beach hit up for the second half of the game, the only three Chiefs who reached base during the game came via St. James fielding errors.
That included one in the first and another to start the second.
From there, LeDuc was working as he often does. He retired 16 straight from the second until the team’s third error of the night with one out in the seventh.
“He’s just that kid we feel so confident with on the mound,” coach Robbie Centracchio said. “He attacks the strike zone. We know what we’re going to get. He’s going to pitch to contact. If he’s on, he’s going to get a lot of strikeouts. But either way, he’s going to keep his pitch count down and it’s going to be a quick game. He’s going to give us a chance to win.”
The Sharks’ offense chipped in with eight hits, including three from Parker Rabon. St. James scored two in the opening frame before padding the lead with two more in each the fourth and fifth innings.
About the only thing St. James didn’t capitalize on was nine men left on base, something that plagued the Sharks in their loss to Myrtle Beach the first time around, as well as two of the team’s Mingo Bay Baseball Classic losses last week.
That’s something Centracchio said the team needs to fix, especially if a region title and solid postseason seeding are going to happen.
“Being a one seed is a huge advantage,” he said. “Those Mingo Bay games were really disappointing; we didn’t score runs. But the region games are where we really focus.”
St. James will sandwich non-region games against Conway (Thursday and Wednesday) around Tuesday’s home tilt with Region VII-AAA foe Georgetown. After that, it’s on the all-important rematch with Myrtle Beach.
The winner of that one likely controls its own destiny in the final two playoff-determining games.
“We’ve got a good enough team to make a deep run in the playoffs,” LeDuc said. “We’ve got a good core group [who returned] from last year. … None of this is unexpected. We just need to get everything going.”
NMB | 000 | 000 | 0 | — | 0 | 0 | 2 |
St. James | 200 | 220 | x | — | 6 | 8 | 3 |
▪ W - Dillon LeDuc. L - Kyle Cooper. Top hitters - St. James: Parker Rabon 3-3, 2 RBI, Run; Liam Bloom 1-4, 2B, RBI; Drake Martin 0-1, 3 BB, SB, Run; Harrison VanLandingham 1-2, 2 HBP, Run.
▪ Records: North Myrtle Beach 5-10, 1-5 Region VII-AAA; St. James 9-4, 5-1.
Contact IAN GUERIN at ian@ianguerin.com.
This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 9:23 PM with the headline "LeDuc tosses no-hitter as St. James baseball stifles North Myrtle Beach."