Prior to taking the field for a pair of baseball games on Saturday, Parker Maddox and Casper Clark decided to have a little friendly competition to see who could notch the most strikeouts.
The competition between Maddox, Clark and Jakob Meyer isn’t animous, but rather a healthy battle to push each other and see how dominant each of the three aces can become for a Columbus North team that is ranked No. 4 in Class 4A. The Bull Dogs host Greenwood on Thursday and visit 4A No. 3 Columbus East on Friday.
“Whether we were in the dugout or on the field while the other one was on the mound, there was a lot of ‘We’ve got your back,’ kind of feeling, and then ‘Congratulations’ or high-fives to the other one if they do something good rather than being jealous,” Clark said.
Clark, a junior right-hander, leads the Bull Dogs (14-4) with a 0.69 ERA. He is 3-1 with 34 strikeouts and only five walks in 23 innings pitched. Clark, who plays first base when he isn’t pitching, also is one of the team’s top hitters with a .356 average, one home run and 12 RBIs.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Meyer, a senior right-hander, has the best record at 4-0. He has a 1.28 ERA, with 42 strikeouts and eight walks in 27.1 innings.
Maddox, a senior right-hander, is 3-1 with a 1.07 ERA. He has 28 strikeouts and nine walks in 19.2 innings.
“All three of us have done exceptionally well,” Clark said. “There are things that you can work on or things that you can get better on, but for the post part, we’ve held teams to very few or no runs.”
The trio’s talents were on full display last month in the Prep Baseball Report Midwest Select Tournament at Grand Park in Westfield. After Meyer and reliever Adam Chapman combined to beat Libertyville (Illinois) 9-4, Maddox and Clark threw back-to-back shutouts against out-of-state powers the following day.
Maddox threw a two-hit shoutout in an 11-0 win against Portage Northern, who was the No. 1-ranked team in Michigan. Clark then hurled a four-hit shutout in a 2-0 win against Edwardsville, the No. 8-ranked team in Illinois.
“I think we’ve played well enough to win,” Maddox said. “Probably 100 percent of our games, we’ve underperformed a little bit.”
Meyer agreed.
“We haven’t performed in some of our games that we should have easily won,” Meyer said.
All three of the aces committed more than a year ago to play Division I baseball. Clark is headed to Indiana University and Meyer has signed with Evansville. Maddox, after originally committing to IU, switched to Ohio University after former IU coach Chris Lemonis left for Mississippi State.
Maddox said having his signing out of the way has helped take away some of the pressure he had put on himself.
“I feel like it’s more helping the team, not trying to show off for myself,” Maddox said. “It’s trying to help the team get us back in the dugout so the hitters can hit and get some runs on the board.”
Maddox has been the fastest of the three pitchers. He reached a high of 93 mph three times on Saturday morning against Jeffersonville.
Clark hit 90 mph on Saturday afternoon against Terre Haute North and reached 92 mph over the winter. Meyer hit 89 last month at Jennings County.
“It’s awesome,” said Hunter McIntosh, who shares pitching coach duties with Daniel Ayers. “It’s essentially three games a week that we can hand them the ball and say, ‘Here you go, go do your thing,’ and we know that the other team is going to score zero, one or two runs and if our offense can find a way to score some runs, we know we’re going to win the game.”
McIntosh and Ayers formed a formidable pitching duo themselves for North the first three years of this decade. When McIntosh was a senior and Ayers was a junior in 2012, they led the Bull Dogs to a 24-3 record and a Conference Indiana title.
But what North has now in the trio of aces goes beyond that.
“It’s definitely easier than it has been in years’ past,” North head coach Ben McDaniel said. “We’re confident rolling any of the three of those guys out, no matter who the opponent is, and we’ll roll with any of them. It’s a good problem to have, trying to get them all enough innings. It’s definitely a luxury for us.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”If you go” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Columbus North at Columbus East baseball
When: 5 p.m. Friday
Where: Columbus East High School
[sc:pullout-text-end]
