Marino, Fenwick finding their groove
May 10—PEABODY — It took Bishop Fenwick junior righty Anthony Marino about an inning to get comfortable on his home mound Monday afternoon.
One he did, Marino was untouchable.
Mixing a hard fastball with an impressive changeup, Marino went the distance with nine strikeouts and only one clean hit allowed to pitch the Crusaders by visiting Arlington Catholic, 6-2.
The win avenged an early season Catholic Central League loss to the Cougars and brought Fenwick (7-8) within a game of .500 after starting the season 1-6.
"As a new coaching staff, it took us some time to learn the players and for them to learn us," head coach Matt Antonelli said. "It was a matter of understanding strengths and weaknesses and it took us a couple of weeks to learn who does what well. Once we figured all that stuff out, we've gelled and it's been really good."
Despite walking the first batter on four pitches and falling behind 1-0 on a hit batsman and an error, Marino was in total control on a windy afternoon. He retired 10 in a row from the second inning until getting beat by a leadoff infield single in the sixth; a string-pulling changeup caused a lot of short-armed swings by AC that produced both strikeouts and groundball outs.
"Anthony's stuff is electric. When he's around the zone, he's great," said Antonelli, whose junior ace from Lynn now had 46 strikeouts on the season to rank third in the greater North Shore area.
"He has great stuff and he was really feeling that changeup today. When its on and he keeps going it, that's really tough to hit. It's an elite pitch."
The Crusaders produced offensively throughout the lineup with nine hits coming from seven players. Marino jumpstarted his own win by leading off the second with a single and coming around to score on a fielder's choice by Dan Reddick.
Mike Faragi, who scored twice, came around on an error to put Fenwick on top for good and Costa Beechin's RBI single made it 3-1 after two frames.
Back-to-back singles by Chris Faraca and Marino led to an RBI single by Andrew McKenzie (2-for-3) as the lead stretched out to 4-1. AC got one back in the sixth but the Crusaders responded immediately by tacking on two more.
Reddick's sacrifice fly plated one and leadoff man Gianni Mercurio clubbed a two-out, RBI double to give the Crusaders plenty of breathing room.
"Our first priority was to put the ball in play. We wanted to raise the probability of doing that, shorten up our swings and put pressure on a defense to make a play," Antonelli said. "Since we bought into that, we've done a better job offensively and we've started to win a lot more games."
Though the Cougars loaded the bases in the seventh inning and got the tying run to the plate, Marino was able to bear down and finish off a complete game on 106 pitches with one final strikeout. He finished with two hits allowed, three walks and two hit batters and benefited from some very strong infield defense; blossoming first baseman Nick Villano shot off an excellent ability to reach for throws and stretch out for some close outs.
"Nick's probably grows to about 6-foot-3 and 225 or so. He's a really hard worker in the weight room and the way he moves around the bag and has such flexibility is impressive," Antonelli noted. "He's very good defensively."
