Losses can linger, but for Long Beach baseball,\u00a0it sparked a response.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a 10-0 defeat to South Side on April 7, the Marines flipped the script a day later, riding timely hitting and a strong outing from senior ace Nathan Hall to a 10-6 win; an early example of the resilience that defined the start to their season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long\u00a0Beach is coming off an 8-14 season, where it lost to Mepham and Bellmore JFK in\u00a0pool play. Through the\u00a0Marines\u2019\u00a0first six games, they\u2019re 3-3, but 1-2 in Conference AA-1, and the record doesn\u2019t tell the entire story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got timely hits that day,\u201d Long Beach coach Jason Zizza\u00a0said of the April 8 victory. \u201cOur pitching was outstanding from Hall. [sophomore] Kellen DeSantis came in and closed the door in the final two innings, who\u2019s a 10th grader.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hall earned the team\u2019s first conference win. He tossed five innings of two-run ball and struck out three. He headlines Long Beach\u2019s rotation as its ace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNathan\u2019s what I like to call a gamer,\u201d Zizza said. \u201cHe wants the ball all the time and goes out there and competes. He\u2019s a strike thrower. He works really fast; his tempo is great. He keeps hitters off-balance. He goes after guys; it\u2019s really fun to watch him pitch. We were able to come away with a victory, which is great against a team like South Side.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Marines\u2019 offense got \u2018timely hits\u2019 and \u2018capitalized\u2019 on mistakes made by South Side, which propelled them to victory.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJesse Stadtman is our leading hitter right now,\u201d Zizza said about the junior catcher who entered Friday\u2019s game batting .600 with a .667 on-base percentage. \u201cHe\u2019s been on absolute fire. He went one-for-three [on Friday]. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRyden Nafte [junior second baseman] is our lead-off hitter who\u2019s on fire as well.\u00a0He\u2019s hitting in the high .400\u2019s. He\u2019s great at the top of the lineup; he has really tough at-bats. Against Kellenberg, he had a 16-pitch at-bat, then managed to work a base hit on the 16th pitch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DeSantis,\u00a0who plays\u00a0first base, came up with two big hits in the win against South Side.\u00a0Senior infielder\/outfielder\u00a0Joe Lordi\u00a0is hitting around .400.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long Beach is a\u00a0team\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0becoming a fixture\u00a0in the playoffs. The Marines have punched their ticket to the postseason the last four seasons and eight of their last 10. \u201cWe feel like we\u2019re a playoff-caliber team every year,\u201d Zizza said. \u201cWe feel like our program\u2019s at the place now where we\u2019re ready to take that next step and we\u2019re ready to become a team where making the playoffs is expected.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
An identity for this young team was described as \u2018relentless\u2019 on both sides of the ball and they\u2019re going to \u2018compete on every pitch,\u2019 Zizza said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pitchers are going right after hitters,\u201d Zizza said. \u201cWe stress throwing strike one and we have a motto on our team: On or off in three, strikeout in four. That means we challenge our pitchers to get every hitter to never see more than three pitches unless they\u2019re striking out.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Marines are back in action on Friday against New Hyde Park on the road. First pitch is set for 5 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Losses can linger, but for Long Beach baseball,\u00a0it sparked a response.\u00a0\u00a0 After a 10-0 defeat to South Side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-274061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}