Three-hitter fuels Gaels’ victory

Chris Sheff doesn’t normally use his starting pitchers on three days’ rest, but the Bishop Gorman baseball coach didn’t have much of a choice Tuesday.

With the Gaels playing their seventh game in the last six days and his pitching staff stretched thin, Sheff called on senior Stephen Manthei to take the mound against red-hot Spring Valley.

“We wanted one of our top arms going because they’re one of the better teams in our league,” Sheff said.

Manthei made the move pay off, overcoming a slow start to fire a three-hitter in Gorman’s 9-2 Southwest League win over the host Grizzlies.

“Coming back on three days’ rest, it was decent,” said Manthei, who has signed with Arizona. “I didn’t have my best stuff, but it was above average. I’m pretty happy with it.”

The win was the 24th in a row for the Gaels (25-3, 9-0 Southwest) and kept them two games up on Sierra Vista in the league standings. It also snapped a nine-game winning streak for Spring Valley (18-5, 7-3), which fell into third place.

“You can’t give them opportunities,” said Grizzlies coach Paul Bassett, whose team committed four errors. “If you make mistakes, they’re going to take advantage of them.”

The Gaels spotted Manthei a 4-0 lead in the first inning, with the big blow coming on a two-run homer to right by senior first baseman Jeff Malm.

Spring Valley answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning, as Enzo Bello scored on an error and catcher Chase Lacomb doubled in Garrett Blair.

But after that, Manthei retired 14 in a row and 20 of the final 21 batters he faced. The Grizzlies’ only hit came in the fifth inning when

Ryan Hendershot’s chopper up the middle took an in-between hop and got past Gorman second baseman Johnny Fields.

“After the first inning I sat down and regained my focus, and I kind of felt it take off from there,” Manthei said. “It kind of clicked after they got a couple runs. I had to get myself going.”

Manthei finished with nine strikeouts and needed only 77 pitches (56 strikes) to get the complete-game win.

“The kid really pitched well,” Bassett said. “He threw two pitches for strikes and kept us off-balance. His breaking ball was a plus breaking ball today.”

Gaels junior right fielder Neil Lawhorn went 4-for-4 with an RBI, and sophomore catcher Erik Van Meetren was 2-for-4 with two RBIs.

Center fielder Joey Rickard finished 2-for-4 with three stolen bases and three runs while igniting Gorman’s offense from the top of the order.

After reaching on an error and scoring in the first, Rickard had an infield single leading off the fifth and scored on Field’s two-run double. Van Meetren and Lawhorn added run-scoring singles in the inning to give Gorman an 8-2 advantage.

Rickard also tripled with two outs in the sixth and scored on Manthei’s double to put the Gaels on top, 9-2.

“We’ve been swinging the bats really well the last 15 games,” Sheff said. “The key was the big first inning. We made Hendershot work a lot. We got his pitch count up and got a lead we were able to hold on to.”