Baseball: Richards stifles Lemont

Updated: April 12, 2012 8:34PM

A challenging early season schedule may not have paid dividends in the win column for Richards, which was 3-5 through eight games.

However, it’s paying off now.

Richards won for the seventh time in its last eight games, dumping host Lemont 8-2 on Thursday in a South Suburban crossover.

The Bulldogs (10-6, 5-0) belted 10 hits against three Lemont pitchers, including highly regarded sophomore lefty Jake Latz.

“We not only faced some tough competition early on, we faced some really good left-handed pitching,” Richards coach Brian Wujcik said. “Maybe that helped us today.”

Jake Beiriger (2-for-4) and Jordan Julian stroked RBI singles that helped Richards to a 3-2 lead after six innings.

The Bulldogs exploded for five runs in the seventh to put the game away. Jesse Valenti (2-for-3) drove in two of those runs with a single and Lou Castro (2-for-4) delivered an RBI single.

“When the score was 3-2, I was sitting there thinking, we were striking out and popping up with runners on base too much and it might come back to hurt us,” Wujcik said. “In the seventh, we did a nice of putting the ball in play and capitalizing on their mistakes.”

After back-to-back singles by Kyle Milinowisch and Gio Schmitt to start the bottom of the first inning, Lemont (7-6, 3-2) would record one more hit the rest of the game, a single by Tyler Jay in the sixth.

Richards starting pitcher Kyle Mastalerz went five strong innings, mixing his pitches and keeping the Indians off balance. He walked two and struck out one. Vince Boettger and Jon Danielson did a nice job in relief to preserve the win.

Lemont coach Joe Rodeghero was not pleased with his team’s effort.

“In the first inning we get two hits and let them off the hook,” he said. “We were content the rest of the game. Our pitchers need to do a better job of pounding the strike zone.”

Lemont pitchers walked six and hit two batters.

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