Brady’s arm, bat lead Cascade baseball past Jackson

Published 10:41 pm Friday, March 23, 2012

EVERETT — With K.J. Brady pitching a gem, Cascade only needed a bit of timely hitting to beat Jackson on Friday afternoon.

As it happened, Brady provided the offensive heroics, too.

On the mound the crafty sophomore scattered four hits around four walks and six strikeouts to register his second consecutive shutout, a 2-0 decision for Cascade’s first Western Conference win of the new baseball season. At the plate, he delivered a two-out, two-run single in the fourth inning to hand Jackson its first league loss.

“(Brady) was phenomenal,” Bruins coach Scott Stencil said. “That’s a very good team he just shut out, but he’s very competitive and he doesn’t like to lose. … I expected him to pitch well, but he was probably better than I thought he’d be. He was amazing.”

Coming on the heels of a 3-0 shutout of Marysville Pilchuck last Saturday, “he’s actually been better than I thought he’d be. I knew he’d be pretty good this year, but right now he’s ahead of (that). He has more velocity than I thought he’d have and he just commands the strike zone.”

Jackson is usually a potent offensive team — the Timberwolves were last season’s Class 4A state tournament runner-up — so shutouts are rare.

“But when (opposing pitchers) pitch well, it happens,” Jackson coach Kirk Nicholson said. “(Brady) did a really nice job mixing (his pitches) up, and when he had to have a pitch, he got it. … He’s a special athlete.”

The game started out as a tasty matchup between savvy southpaws — Brady for Cascade and Jackson’s Sam Brown, a senior and one of the league’s top returning pitchers. Brown wriggled out of bases-loaded, one-out jams in both the first and third innings, but the Bruins pushed across two unearned runs in the fourth.

Cascade’s Cody Bergmans led off the inning with a chopper back to the mound that deflected off Brown’s chest and bounced far enough away that Bergmans reached base safely. Teammate Austin Brenneisen then dropped a dandy sacrifice bunt that Jackson failed to handle cleanly, putting runners at first and second.

Leadoff hitter Taylor Marquardt followed with a sacrifice, moving both runners into scoring position. Brown struck out the next hitter, but Brady broke the scoreless deadlock with a soft liner into shallow left field for two runs. Brenneisen slid wide of the plate and touched it in passing with his hand for the second run on a very close play.

The winning hit, which came on a 1-1 pitch, “was a curveball and I was thinking fastball,” Brady said. “I checked swung, but I hit it right on the screws.” And with Jackson shortstop Conor Plaisance giving chase into short left field, “it carried just enough (to drop safely),” Brady added.

Back on the mound in the top of the fifth, Brady allowed two base runners but came through unscathed. He then struck out the side in the sixth, though there was drama to come in the seventh.

After Brady got two quick outs, Traishawn Patrick and teammate Aaron Avalos had back-to-back singles to left field. Leadoff hitter Joakim Soderqvist, one of Jackson’s top offensive threats, stepped to the plate with the tying runs aboard.

Soderqvist made solid contact, but his sharp one-hopper was right at Bruins second baseman Patrick Chung, who fielded cleanly and threw to first for the game-ending out.

“I was just trying to control all my pitches, hit my spots, mix it up, get ahead early (in the count) … and then let my defense do the work,” Brady said. “I don’t try to strike everyone out. I’d rather pitch to contact and then let my defense do the work.”

Cascade was involved in two other shutouts earlier this week, but the Bruins ended up on the wrong end of 9-0 and 15-0 routs against Edmonds-Woodway on Tuesday and Wednesday. Getting outscored 24-0 in two days will get any team’s attention, “and we talked quite a bit after that,” Stencil said.

“We talked about how this was an opportunity for us either to come together or not,” he said. “(The players realized) that it was an opportunity for us to get better from here forward and they came out today ready to go.”

At Cascade H.S.

Jackson0000000—043

Cascade0002000—261

Brown, Zuzula (5) and Johansen; Brady and Lukas. WP—Brady. LP—Brown. Records—Jackson is 2-1 in league, 2-2 overall; Cascade is 1-2, 5-2.