Reno’s Luippold extends scoreless-inning streak as Huskies beat Carson 4-0 to clinch Sierra League baseball title
CHUCK HILDEBRAND
NEVADAPREP.COM
Posted on NevadaPrep.com
5/4/2006
RENO (May 3) – Physically or tactically, Reno pitcher Garrett Luippold won’t remind anyone of Don Drysdale or Orel Hershiser.
Numerically, though, he’s getting a whiff of the rarefied air those two Los Angeles Dodgers pitching greats once breathed.
The junior lefthander kept his 4A Sierra League earned run average at 0.00, improved to 8-0 in league and extended his streak of consecutive scoreless innings in league play to 41 with a four-hit shutout Wednesday as the host Huskies clinched the league championship with a 4-0 victory over Carson.
John Rice sent a two-run homer into the scaffolding of a construction project behind the left-field wall in the third inning to give Luippold all the offensive support he needed as Reno improved to 19-0 in league and 27-4 overall. The Huskies can complete a perfect league season by winning their final two games of the series with their longtime rivals Thursday at Carson and Friday at Reno.
Carson fell to 15-4 in league and 19-8 overall, but already had clinched the Sierra League’s No. 2 seed in next week’s Northern 4A regional tournament, from which the top two finishers will advance to the 4A state tournament at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Luippold required only 83 pitches to complete his latest tour de force, which lasted only one hour and 52 minutes. He struck out eight, giving him 66 Ks in his 41 league innings, and walked only one. Only one ball, a line drive to center field by Logan Parsley in the fourth inning that Adam Shochat caught just in front of the warning track, was struck with more than pedestrian authority.
If Luippold pitches two more shutouts in the regional, he could come within hailing distance of one of major league baseball’s most hallowed pitching records – the 59 straight scoreless innings by Hershiser in 1988 when he won the Cy Young Award and pitched the Dodgers to a World Series title. The previous record of 58 1/3 innings was set by Drysdale in 1968, breaking a record that had stood for 55 years.
Hershiser was tall and lean, and in ’88 trying to hit his slider was like John Daly trying to win at a $5,000 slot machine. Drysdale was a huge, hulking power pitcher who was perhaps the meanest pitcher of a mean era when zeroing in on hitters’ heads was considered an accepted part of the game.
Luippold doesn’t resemble either of those pitchers, and not only because he’s a lefty while the other two were righthanders.
He’s only about 5-foot-10 and, while strong and sturdy, he doesn’t intimidate with his physical presence, and he uses his outside pitches to set up his inside deliveries. He doesn’t generate remarkable velocity – perhaps topping out at around 87 mph – and his breaking pitches don’t veer enough to buckle hitters.
But all of his pitches are “heavy” in that they have downward, deadening spin, which means he throws a lot of ground balls. All four of Carson’s hits were choppers or squirmers through the infield, and the lineout by Parsley – who entered the game batting a league-best .533 – was the only fly-ball out of the 21 he got. With the help of catcher Zach Thomson’s framing, Luippold was able to pitch to slivers on the outside fringe of the plate. Because he changes speeds so often and well, he had many of the Senators (six of whom were hitting .300 or better entering the game) lunging and committing their weight forward too soon.
According to Reno coach Pete Savage, Luippold does have one thing in common with Hershiser, who was nicknamed “Bulldog” because of his tenacity.
“He’s pretty amazing,” Savage said. “Not only does he have outstanding command of three pitches (fastball, curve and slider), but he can throw all three where they’re called for, and he has a really, really tough mental game. He just does not like to give up runs … any runs.”
Luippold says his ability to sink the ball is something he has been able to nurture naturally without having to focus on manufacturing a motion. He also says he pitches to put the ball in play, and not to accumulate large strikeout totals or illuminate radar guns.
(In that respect, he is similar to Jeff Ballard, a Stanford lefthander during the early 1980s at whom scouts scoffed because he wasn’t particularly big or burly, and had even less velocity at Stanford than Luippold does now. Nevertheless, Ballard eventually was drafted and signed by the Baltimore Orioles, for whom he won 18 games in 1989 before injuries short-circuited his career.)
“I don’t really try to do it (sink the ball); I just do it,” said Luippold, who estimates that about 35 to 40 percent of his pitches are off-speed deliveries. “I know that when people hit the ball, I’ve got a defense that can go get it, and I know I can’t get overloaded too much early because then I’ll have nothing left at the end.”
After Tony Fagan beat out an infield single with one out in the second, Thomson threw Fagan out while trying to steal second. And after Brooks Greenlee kangarooed a double into the left-field corner to lead off the fifth and advanced to third on an infield out, Reno shortstop Davis Banks saved the shutout and Luippold’s scoreless-inning litany one out later by charging a nubber by Sean Costella, barehanding the ball on the dead run and getting Costella by half a step at first while throwing off-balance.
Greenlee’s hit was Carson’s last of the game as Luippold retired nine of the final 10 hitters he faced (the only baserunner was on his only walk) while not allowing the Senators to hit the ball out of the infield.
His performance obscured the fact that Carson starter Josh Caron pitched well enough to win against most teams and most pitchers. The score was 2-0 after five innings, and that was only because of Rice’s home run. Caron, ahead 0-and-2 on the count, tried to get a fastball up and in on Rice, who sent it up and out – way out on a rare windless day in one of the few Northern 4A ballparks that doesn’t make every hitter a long-ball threat.
Both runs were unearned because Rice’s HR came after a two-out infield error by Senators shortstop Kevin Schlange, allowing Tom Moore to reach first.
“I wasn’t really looking for anything,” Rice said. “I just got back to basics and tried to see it and hit it. I’d just missed the 0-and-1 pitch, which was a good pitch to hit. Their guy pitched a great game and we had to play real well to win.
“We can go a long way if we keep the closeness we have and don’t have any separation between us.”
Caron went 5 1/3 innings and gave up only two hits – the homer to Rice, and a single to the last batter he faced – Mike Brown, whose hit brought home Rice (who had walked) to extend Reno’s lead to 3-0. Pinch-hitter Jon Dankworth singled home the Huskies’ final run.
“(Caron) threw a hell of a game, except for that one mistake (to Rice),” Carson coach Steve Cook said. “He tried to get the fastball up and in and missed, and the kid just took advantage of it. I’m not going to give anybody any bulletin-board material, but I was pleased with our approach and our focus, and I think we can play with anybody in (the Northern 4A).
“You just have to tip your cap to Reno.”
RENO 4, CARSON 0
Carson……………………..000 000 0 – 0 4 2
Reno……………………….002 002 x – 4 3 0
Caron, Lalarius (6) and Greenlee; Luippold and Thomson. WP – Luippold (1 BB, 8K). LP – Caron (5 BB, 2K).
HR – Rice (R ). 2B – Greenlee (C ). RBI – Rice (R ) 2, Brown (R ) 1, Dankworth (R ) 1. Hits – Schlange, Hein, Fagan, Greenlee (C); Rice, Brown, Dankworth (R).
I just assumed it was a brand new season