Waynesburg baseball clicking in all areas during 8-0 start
Perry Cunningham’s first season at the helm of the Waynesburg baseball team couldn’t have started much better.
The Raiders are 8-0 and Cunningham seems to be pushing all the right buttons out of the gate, but for him it’s more about the options he has to choose from.
He lauded their commitment to his philosophy of perfecting the little things like bunting, baserunning and fielding.
Add in natural talent and it’s a combination that’s been lethal.
“First off, we have really good players,” Cunningham said. “I think anytime you’re a coach and you have success you have to have a really good group of kids. In our case not only do we have good players, but we have kids that have played together. That’s one of the benefits of being a small school. They know each other.
“I think it’s our kids buying in. It’s one thing to talk about doing the little things, but when your guys buy into it, you see the stuff you teach play out in a game and you see a preparedness. That’s my job to prepare guys. We try to work on the things that we think will happen and make sure we’re ready to execute the situation, whatever it is.”
Cunningham previously coached Waynesburg University’s baseball team for three years and pitched professionally in the Frontier League for the Chillicothe Paints.
So far, his Raiders are firing on all cylinders.
They’ve pitched to a 1.94 ERA as a team, boast a .396 team batting average and have 52 stolen bases.
Tyler Groves is 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA with 28 strikeouts and eight walks. He’s allowed only four runs and 17 hits in 18 innings. Alex VanSickle is 1-0 with a 1.75 ERA over 12 innings with four starts and the Warriors have two pitchers that have flourished out of the bullpen.
Austin Surber has not allowed an earned run in 12 innings of relief and has 22 strikeouts and three walks. C.J. Corwin has a 0.88 ERA in eight innings and has yielded only one earned run with 10 strikeouts and three walks.
“I inherited four really experienced pitchers,” Cunningham said. “When you have four guys who want the ball, you don’t need to have one guy go out and throw his maximum 95 to 100 pitches to get us to the seventh inning. When you have depth, especially in these section games, you can kind of read the game and see how it goes. You don’t have to pull a guy, maybe a couple batters too late, because there isn’t enough depth. Having those four guys helps me manage the game and the staff. If we have a day where someone is maybe not throwing as many strikes as we’d like, then we can make a move instead of waiting and hoping that they figure it out.”
VanSickle, an IUP recruit, leads the offense, hitting .667 with a double, a pair of triples and homers and 12 RBI. He’s stolen 12 bases.
He’s not the only one producing, however.
Derek Turcheck (.522 batting average), Grant Pack (.350), Surber (.290), Ethan Kiger (.357), Jake Stephenson (.375) and Corwin (.313) have all got off to hot starts.
Teams simply can’t pitch around VanSickle and take their chances elsewhere.
“We’ve talked about this as a staff. We’re a team that we don’t need just two or three guys to be on,” Cunningham said. “I’ve been a part of a team and have coached teams where you have two or three main guys and if they go 3-for-15 in a game you probably aren’t going to do well, but if they go 9-for-15 you probably had a good day. In our case we’re not only confident in the nine guys in the lineup, but all of the guys on our varsity team. If someone has an off day, there’s other guys there that will pick them up. That takes the pressure off.”
Waynesburg has swept its first two Class 3A Section 4 series against Brownsville and Washington. The Raiders are scheduled to open a two-game set against Seton LaSalle on Monday and have two-game sets against McGuffey, Keystone Oaks and Charleroi to come.
Seton LaSalle is the defending WPIAL Class 2A champion. The Rebels bumped up to 3A this season.
“When it’s time to play a team on that particular day we’re going to give forth the best effort we can,” Cunningham said. “We’re hopefully going to get in a solid couple days of practice leading up to Seton LaSalle on Monday. We’ll see where things fall, but I believe in our guys.”