Last night I watched a game between my son's old HS and its perennial rival for the league title. Both teams have top-rated pitchers, both of whom are seniors and have committed to Oregon State.
End of seventh: tied at zero. Both pitchers pitched a scoreless eighth, then a scoreless ninth .... then a scoreless tenth! Our kid then pitched a 1-2-3 eleventh inning before we scored a run off the reliever in the bottom half of the 11th.
I have never seen a single HS pitcher go ten innings of scoreless ball, much less TWO IN ONE GAME.
I was very worried about pitch count. Sure, there weren't many runners so the counts were low. I wasn't surprised by 8 innings, maybe even 9. I have to admit I was surprised that both coaches brought the ace out for the 10th, and my son's former coach threw our guy in the 11th.
The newspaper article had the pitch counts at 167 for the 10 inning performance and 130 for the 11 inning performance.
That's a lot of pitches. In my view, 130 is marginal, 167 is way too many.
Neverthless, what a treat to see these two performances!
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