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Loyalsock’s Malone has a beauty of pitching gem

STATE COLLEGE – Off-handedly in the fourth inning, Zac Martin asked one of his assistant coaches Wednesday how many pitches Loyalsock starting pitcher Andrew Malone had thrown.

When he heard the number 24, Martin, the first-year Lancers’ head coach, was taken aback. He wasn’t necessarily surprised, though. It’s kind of what Malone has done his entire senior season.

Martin’s view from the Lancers’ dugout of Malone’s three-hit shutout masterpiece over Central Columbia last night was much better than his view the past three seasons. Mainly because the two are wearing the same uniform this time around. Instead of finding ways to beat Malone, Martin stood at the top step of the third-base dugout at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park yesterday and watched Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel.

Malone won his second career district championship game last night as Loyalsock beat the Blue Jays for the District 4 Class AAA championship, 6-0, at Penn State. But this one, he was in complete control over. He wasn’t just a fill-in for an ailing ace like he was in 2014 when the Lancers beat Bloomsburg for the Class AA title.

Malone was the ace last night. In fact, he proved in District 4 he may very well be the ace of all aces.

Nary a Central Columbia baserunner reached second base. Only five reached base at all, two of which were erased at second base.

You want to see cruise control on a baseball field? This was it.

“That’s just him being all around the plate,” said Martin, who was an assistant coach at Montoursville the last three years. “We knew that Central Columbia likes to jump on some pitches. So we hit our spots and we let him go out there and work. You just have to let him sit there and do what he does.”

Malone has forged himself into the Lancers’ best pitcher under the heat of the expectations which come with being the most recent District 4 baseball team to win a state championship. He’s no longer the second or third option in a pitching rotation which features Division I players Kyle Datres and Luke Glavin. He’s taken on the role of a leader those two carried with such gusto and moxie to consecutive state championships in 2013 and 2014.

It was all on display last night on the campus of Penn State University. He induced 11 ground ball outs. He quietly struck out five Blue Jay batters with deft precision on the edges of the plate with both his fastball and curveball. He faced just three batters over the minimum and looked like he barely broke a sweat.

“The guys, coming in, told me to just be Andrew Malone,” Malone said. “I slept on it and I said ‘I’m just going to do me.’ Knowing I had the best teammates in the world, they were going to do everything for me, win or lose. I knew they would give me 100 percent, so I’m going to give them 100 percent.”

As a freshman and sophomore, he gladly listened when Datres or Glavin had advice for him. Datres, whose likely to be drafted in this month’s Major League Baseball draft, taught the southpaw how to be a bulldog on the mound and never give in during a tough situation. Glavin, who pitches at Lehigh, taught Malone how to pitch. Their lessons were about how to approach hitters and how to improve when he wasn’t pitching.

Those attributes were all on display last night as he needed just 74 pitches to get through his second consecutive shutout. His curveball buckled more knees than an Allen Iverson crossover. He wore out the black edge of the outside corner with a fastball which sat between 79 and 82 miles per hour for the most part.

After allowing his first base hit in the third inning, Malone needed just two pitches to induce a sublime 4-6-3 double play capped by a rocket of a throw from shortstop Connor Watkins to first baseman Michael LaPoint. Facing a 3-2 count to Central leadoff hitter Zach Boyd in the fourth inning, Malone dropped in a curveball for a called strike three like it was a catcher’s mitt-seeking baseball.

When the Lancers’ offense posted two runs in the first inning, Malone needed just six pitches to get through the bottom half. He needed eight more pitches in the second and only seven more in the third. He faced just two three-ball counts, threw first-pitch strikes to 17 of the 24 batters he faced, and never faced more than four batters in an inning.

“I caught Kyle, and Malone can do it just as well,” Loyalsock catcher Eric Holz said. “He might not throw it as hard, but he can pitch a game just like Kyle can.”

“I knew he was a great ballplayer, but when I got here people told me how nice Andrew was,” Martin said. “And it’s not just that he’s nice, he’s first class in everything he does. He cares so much about this team, and I can’t imagine a better person to come out of this program.”

Mitch Rupert can be reached at 326-1551, ext. 3129, or by email at mrupert@sungazette.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Mitch_Rupert.

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