Baseball: Juggling the staff a key component of regionals

It's an annual given that the team with the deepest pitching staff is usually going to have a decent shot at winning the Northern 4A baseball tournament, which opened Tuesday afternoon and will continue through the rest of the week at Reno and Wooster high schools.

Having to win a minimum of four games in five days with only 11 innings to work with from each pitcher on your roster demands at the very least two solid starters and a couple of clutch relievers.

A loss automatically puts your team on the brink of elimination and two during those first four days is a season-ender.

Understandably, it becomes critical who the coach decides to put on the mound during those first two days and how long he keeps them there.

"I think there is a lot of thought that goes into it among coaching staffs," Douglas high coach John Glover said. "Guys sit down and really hash it out leading up to the tournament about who they want and how they go about it.

"The reality is you have to win that first game. Then you have to win the second if you want an honest shot. How you go about that is really the coach's choice. Basically you don't want to get beat with your No. 4 or 5 on the mound in those first two games."

Then there is always the question of how long does a coach leave his top starters in during the early rounds of the tournament, assuming they'll be needed later in the week.

"You get 11 innings per guy in the tournament," Glover said. "If you're way up or way down, I've seen teams pull kids to save innings just to get through that game.

"It can work for you if you're down eight or nine runs, or if you're up by 10. It definitely comes into play when you want to save innings for a guy you'll want to use later in the week."

Douglas enters this year's tournament with the luxury of being able to trot out two of the region's elite pitchers in righty Tyler May (7-0) and lefty Tyler Hoelzen (6-2), both seniors.

May hasn't taken a loss on the mound in two years and has only one loss in the last three. Hoelzen is the only pitcher at Douglas High to have started a regional championship game in the last 10 years. They will both be pitching in their third regional tournament.

So the question becomes, which one do you use first?

"We started talking about it Friday on the way home from Carson," Glover said. "That conversation spilled into Saturday and as guys slept on it, they got new ideas.

"(Douglas pitching coach) Rick Kester called me Saturday morning and had his idea on what he wanted to do. You just hash it out until a scenario makes sense for you.

There are definitely some sleepless hours in the night where you're trying to figure it out."

Outside of that, though, the Tigers have a deep stable of experienced starters waiting behind May and Hoelzen.

Junior Michael Whalin was the team's No. 2 starter last year when May went down with a shoulder injury and leads the team in appearances this year at 13.

Senior Tim Rudnick was the team's No. 3 starter last season in May's absence and has served primarily as the Tigers' closer this season with a 3-0 record, one save and 28 strikeouts.

Sophomore Kameron Van Winkle has been the team's top long reliever over the past two years and already has 10 career wins to his name, despite not being a regular starter.

Junior lefty Beau Battista (1-1) has had a number of solid starts this season as well, giving Douglas six proven starters to work with this week.

"We have some confidence coming into this," Glover said. "We have a number of guys we are very comfortable putting out there. We have three strong starters and then Kameron and Timmy have done a great job. Beau Battista has four starts for us this year as well."

In years past, Glover hasn't hesitated to pull a wildcard out of his sleeve late in the tournament. In 2006 it was left-handed senior reliever Chris Kinsley, who'd only had a handful of career appearances for the Tigers, who stepped up and beat both Reno and Galena on the same day.

The next season, then-sophomore Hoelzen made his first start on Nevada soil in the regional title game against a powerhouse lineup from Galena.

"I don't know if we tried to save those guys, but both of those kids in those situations really stepped up for us," Glover said. "Kinsley had a couple of really big games that day and Hoelzen, he had thrown for us earlier in the year at the Atwater tournament, but he came out and did a great job.

"We have guys who haven't pitched a lot this year that we aren't afraid to throw out there. It just comes down to not having enough innings for everyone to pitch during the regular season as much as we'd like.

"There are a number of kids who will see some time in the zone tournament. We have confidence in everybody we run out there. After the starters we get into guys like Troy Torres, Jeff Crozier and Conner Dillon ... Some of those guys who don't have as many innings but have definitely been effective in the past."