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Marjory Stoneman Douglas Baseball Wins Seventh Straight District Title

by Matt Rothman May 10, 2019

by Matt Rothman May 10, 2019 20 views

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Baseball Wins Seventh Straight District Title 1

MSD Eagles Baseball. (courtesy Laura Collins)

By: Matt Rothman

For a seventh straight year, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas baseball team has won a district championship by defeating Coral Springs High School 10-0 in six innings.

After a dominating start from Kyle Yeoward on Wednesday in a two-hit shutout versus Monarch, Kevin Heinrich started Thursday afternoon and gave the Eagles five scoreless innings allowing no runs and lowering his ERA to around 1.00.

“It was good outing,” said Heinrich. “I got support from our hitters and I went out and did my thing. I was hitting my spots with my fastball. I was locating my slider and coming in with my curveball while not throwing much of my change-up today.”

The offense for MSD got started in the third. Jhan Ledezma led off the inning with a single and advanced to third after back to back walks. Senior Gabe Cabrera then opened the scoring with a two-run single to give MSD a 2-0 lead.

The Eagles weren’t done yet as Gary Swanson reached third after a fielding miscue from Coral Springs that brought in two more runs and Colin Flynn added an RBI bunt single scoring Swanson to make it 5-0.

Just an inning later, Hunter Fitz-Gerald, carrying a batting average over .500, singled home a run and MSD later added another run to take a 7-0 lead. MSD added one in the fifth to increase the lead to eight before Luke Schiltz came in out of the bullpen to get three outs.

With a mercy rule in sight, MSD continued to tack on runs and ended the game with a walk-off hit from Ledezma for another district championship.

“That is the goal every year,” said head coach Todd Fitz-Gerald. “We want to set district supremacy. The goal is to get to the final four. This was a two-game goal. We met that and now we have a three-game goal to get to the state semi-finals.”

There next game will be up against Cypress Bay Wednesday, May 15, in Parkland with the winner reaching the regional semi-finals.

These teams met last year in the same round and the Eagles won 10-1. Fitz-Gerald, Cabrera, and Andrew Jenner all had RBI’s in that game with Louis Esposito getting the final out.

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Matt Rothman

Matt Rothman is a 2018 graduate from Florida Gulf Coast University receiving his bachelor’s degree in journalism and then graduated from the University of Florida as a graduate student. He also works for the Mohave Valley Daily News in Bullhead City, Arizona covering high school sports.