By Kyle LoJacono
Staff Writer
The 2010 Wesley Chapel High baseball team knows where its strengths lie.
“The biggest part of our success this year is our pitching and defense,” said three-year Wildcats coach Chuck Yingling. “Our top starters do a great job and then the bullpen comes in and they hardly ever give up anything. The defense is solid which makes it easier for the pitchers to go deeper into games.”
The leader of that Wesley Chapel (13-3) pitching staff is senior lefthander Cole Miraglia, who transferred from Zephyrhills this season. Miraglia had some difficulty during the fall with his pitching elbow.
“I had a hairline fracture in my arm when I was a sophomore and had to wear a cast for a couple months,” Miraglia said. “It was giving me problems and coach Yingling wanted me to have it looked at.”
Miraglia originally suffered the fracture when he and a friend were “messing around” as he put it. He ended up being hit with a bat in his arm and cracked his ulna, one of the two bones in the forearm.
“The problem was he never got the proper therapy after the injury, so he didn’t have full range of motion in that arm,” Yingling said. “I noticed that he had a weird motion in his delivery and he developed tendonitis, so we shut him down and made him rehab it.”
WebMD.com states tendonitis is an inflammation of any tendon caused by repetitive motion of a slightly damaged body part. Miraglia said he still does not have full range of motion in his left elbow, but that the injury is no longer causing him pain or discomfort.
“It just kept me out of a little while, but now I’m fine and want to play each game,” Miraglia said. “…I try and stay as calm as I can on the mound. Getting upset when things aren’t going my way just makes everyone else nervous behind me in the field.”
The 6-foot-3 left-handed pitcher, who throws a fastball, curveball and changeup, has not had a lot to be upset about this year. He has a 5-1 record with a 0.81 earned run average and a team-high 47 strikeouts through the Wildcats’ first 16 games.
“The thing about Cole is off the field he’s one of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, but he is nothing but serious once he steps through the fences,” said junior pitcher Marcus Crescentini. “He stays focused out there all the time.”
Crescentini also throws a fastball, curveball and changeup, as does fellow junior Matt Wynne.
“We have really good chemistry as a team,” Wynne said. “We have our fights, but we’re all friends that love playing baseball.”
Crescentini and Wynne, or the M and M boys as their coach calls them because of their first names, mainly pitch out of the bullpen. Wynne has a 2-0 record with 20 Ks and a 0.64 ERA. Crescentini has 20 strikeouts and a 3.18 ERA.
Together the pitching staff has a 1.28 ERA and 116 strikeouts to 29 walks.
“We all try and locate with each pitch instead of striking everyone out,” Crescentini said. “We focus on hitting our spots on each pitch and when we do that we get quicker outs and go deeper into games.”
The pitchers have done their job in most of the Wildcats’ games, but without a defense it is difficult to get anyone out.
“Our defense is great,” Crescentini said. “There’s nothing like knowing the guys behind you are going to make every play. We all have more confidence in our pitches with our guys in the field…Our outfield hardly ever drops a ball and we’ve got a catcher named Justin Frost who blocks everything. Geoff (DeGroot) at shortstop makes great plays all the time too. ”
DeGroot, junior, also has a .490 batting average and a team-high 24 hits.
“We wanted to surprise a lot of people this year,” DeGroot said. “We worked hard all offseason to get better. Now we need to stay focused on each game, each inning and each pitch to stay on top of our game. We can’t start expecting anything just because we’ve started on a hot streak.”
Last year Wesley Chapel finished the regular season 9-13, but managed to win three straight games to claim Class 5A, District 7 tournament championship. The Wildcats were eliminated in the regional quarterfinal by Brandon last year and have greater aspirations for this season.
“I expected to have a strong team this year after spending the last two working with the players,” Yingling said. “I think we can go further than the regional quarterfinals this year.”
