PHILADELPHIA — With Bonner ace Cory Sheridan dealing with an injury, someone needed to step up in the rotation for the time being. Enter Jack Redding.
In his first start of the season, Redding was unhittable. He threw all seven innings allowing just two walks while striking out four. Even with Bonner making a few errors in the field, he still finished this game out by throwing just 81 pitches.
His offense certainly made life easy for him early too.
The Friars plated five runs in the top of the first before Redding even threw a pitch. Michael Coleman singled, Cory Sheridan (who is able to DH but not pitch at the moment) walked, and Ryan Friel drive them both in with a double.
More from Friel later.
Gavin DiRita then single and Cole Romano was hit by a pitch to load the bases with still nobody out. Owen Lockhart proceeded to single to extend that lead to 3-0.
Jack Redding helped himself out with a walk to make it 4-0. and they forced Judge’s starting pitcher out of the game before he even recorded an out.
A Joey Graziani sac fly ended the scoring in the inning at 5-0.
After a scoreless inning from Redding, the offense was right back to work. Sheridan drew his second walk of the game and once again Ryan Friel drove him in.
The difference this time was that Friel also drove himself in, as he homered to right field to make it 7-0 and give him 4 RBI already.
It’s a bit anti-climactic, but that was the last run that would score for either team.
Jack Redding was dealing on the mound all day long. He threw 81 pitches and 52 of those were strikes. In the seventh inning he picked up a ground out and a pop out to put himself one out away from a no-hitter. An error in the infield extended the game one more batter, but Redding would make sure that it didn’t matter as he got a flyout to Ryan Friel in right field to wrap up the 7-0 win and the first solo no-hitter of the Delco Baseball season.
Strath Haven tossed back-to-back combined no-hitters last week, but this is the first time we have had a pitcher go the distance himself. A huge performance when Bonner needed it most.
Bonner gets their first PCL win of the season and now sit at 1-2. They will have a non-conference home game with Springside-Chestnut Hill on Saturday at noon for their next game. Their next PCL game will be Monday at Neumann-Goretti.