(Photo by Bill Allen/NJ SportAction) LASHING OUT: Princeton High senior star Chris Brooks follows through on a swing last Thursday in PHS’ 12-7 loss to visiting Hightstown. Brooks had two RBIs and two runs scored in the defeat.

PHS Baseball Off to Rocky Start, Needs to Sharpen Up Execution

Bill Alden

The temperature was dipping into the mid-40s and the Princeton High baseball team was trailing visiting Hightstown by six runs heading into the bottom of the seventh inning last Thursday.

It would have been understandable if the PHS players had gone through the motions in their last at-bat with an eye to getting home and out of the cold.

But the Little Tigers didn’t go out with a whimper. Senior star Chris Brooks led off with a single and ended up scoring when Hightstown misplayed a smash off the bat of Eric Hoffman. A double play, however, killed the rally as PHS fell 12-7 to the Rams.

In assessing the defeat which dropped his club to 0-2, PHS head coach Scott Goldsmith praised his team’s battling spirit.

“We are always fighting,” asserted Goldsmith, whose team dropped its season opener 9-3 to Lawrence the day before the Hightstown game.

“We just want to put ourselves where we are closer than we have been, being a run or two down rather than for or five. We are being aggressive at the plate too, we’re swinging at it. We are making contact; we just have to put it in better spots.”

With his team having been outscored 21-10 in the first two games, Goldsmith acknowledged that his team hasn’t been shaky in some fundamental areas.

“We’ve noticed a pattern with two problems right off the bat — we’re walking way too many batters and we are leaving way too many guys on base,” said Goldsmith.

“Yesterday and today we were in double digits in walks. We left 12 guys on yesterday and we were at least double digits again today. We get the bases loaded and we’re not scoring the runs.”

In the early stages of the Hightstown game, it looked like it was going to be a different story for the Little Tigers.

After giving up a hit and a walk in the top of the first, PHS ace Matt Alvarez struck out the side to get out of the jam unscathed. In the bottom of the first, Brooks stroked a two-run single to give the Little Tigers a 2-0 lead.

Things unraveled after that as Alvarez walked six in the top of the third in giving up six runs as the Little Tigers fell into a 6-2 hole from which they never recovered.

Alvarez gave up a run in the fourth before giving way to Matsu Shimamoto, who gave up five more. PHS scratched out a run in the fourth and two more in the fifth but couldn’t get the big rally it needed.

While Goldsmith wanted to stick with Alvarez, he realized the junior hurler had run out of gas. “The pitch count was getting up so we had to get somebody else in,” said Goldsmith, whose team fell to 0-3 with an 11-1 loss to Hopewell Valley last Monday. “The good thing right now is that we our keeping our errors down and we still want it bad.”

In Goldsmith’s view, taking an upbeat approach is the best way to keep his players from losing that desire.

“I first lay out the negative and then go right into the positives,” said Goldsmith, whose team is slated to play at Nottingham on April 10, host Notre Dame on April 11, and then play at Trenton on April 15.

“We need to keep our heads up and know that there are 23 other games to go so we can definitely turn this around. We’ll take these two losses, we are ready to play again. We have four games in the next week, that’s a bunch. The pitching just has to step up a little bit.”

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