By Roger Gordon

Correspondent

Last season, Rootstown pitcher Brady Kreitzburg struggled somewhat with his strikeouts-to-walks ratio.

This season, the Rootstown senior has righted the ship.

BRADY KREITZBURG

“This season Brady’s command and control are so much better,” head coach Keith Waesch said. “He’s really having a tremendous season.”

Kreitzburg is 4-0 in 27 innings pitched. He has 54 strikeouts and only 13 walks.

His ERA is 1.55. Opponents are batting just .118 off him.

His latest masterpiece came on May 10 in a complete-game, three-hit, 12-strikeout, four-walk performance in leading the Rovers to a 3-2 win at Berkshire.

“Brady just had an unbelievable game,” said Waesch. “He mixed his pitches well and had the hitters off balance practically the whole game.”

Rootstown had been toiling when it comes to timely hitting recently — that is until the sixth inning when sophomore left fielder Carson Hayn’s two-out single down the right-field line drove in what proved to be the tying and winning runs.

The day before, on May 9, Rootstown lost 12-2 at Lake in a game that was shortened to six innings due to the 10-run rule. The Blue Streaks scored seven runs in the fourth inning.

“We kind of shot ourselves in the foot for the first time all season. We had five errors,” Waesch said. “We’d been playing pretty good defense throughout the season. It was a combination of a couple of errors and some timely hitting for Lake, which made for a big inning for them.”

Junior R.J. Soika started on the mound and went five innings. He yielded 11 runs (but only three earned runs) and seven hits while striking out two and walking four. Junior Ethan White pitched the sixth inning.

White, who was the shortstop prior to pitching, had two singles, as did Hayn.

Rootstown is currently 12-7 on the season.