THUNDER BAY – Kade Kryzsko’s college coaches might want to think twice about sending him back to the bullpen.
The Seattle native on Sunday showed he’s got the stuff to be a starter, tossing eight innings of five-hit, shutout ball to lead the Thunder Bay Border Cats to a 2-1 win over the visiting La Crosse Loggers (13-19) at Port Arthur Stadium.
The right-hander, who found trouble in the fourth, loading the bases with one out, didn’t let it rattle him, inducing a pair of infield pop-ups that kept the game scoreless at the time. It’s that type of mettle coach Mitch Feller was seeking out of Kryzsko when he recruited him.
“Kade is a great strike thrower who knows how to live down in the zone and pitches three different pitches to both sides of the plate,” Feller said.
“That’s the Kade I thought I was getting when I was recruiting him and that’s the Kade that showed up today. He showed it in his last time out and he showed it again today. Hopefully we’ll keep moving forward with those kind of dominant performances.”
The Indiana product was masterful most of the afternoon, keeping the Loggers hitters at bay.
“I just went out there trying to throw strikes, trying to hit some spots. Nick (Ciandro) did a great job behind the plate, mixing up the tempo and keeping the other team off balance,” Kryzsko said. “That was a huge part of me being able to keep them off balance as well as I did.”
With the Hoosiers, Kryzsko (1-2) made 18 appearances, all in relief, this past season, striking out 24 batters in 25.1 innings while posting a 3.91 earned run average.
Starting took some getting used to again, but he said it’s all coming together.
“I can definitely tell I can go deeper into games and keep my same velocity longer and longer into games and keep hitting my spots later on. That’s a huge part that helped me today, just hitting spots where the other team couldn’t hit the ball.”
The lone scoring play of the quickly played contest came in the sixth off Loggers starter Cody Ebert.
Brad Dougherty reached on an error and catcher Nick Ciandro singled to open the inning and moved to second and third on a Billy Cook bunt.
Feller then decided to buck baseball odds and went with a righty-versus-righty matchup, bringing Colin Rosenbaum into hit for lefty Mark Venice to face Ebert. The North Carolina infielder promptly delivered, slapping a single to right that scored both runners and gave him a team-leading 23 RBI.
Fuller said it was just a hunch.
“It does go against baseball logic. I just thought it wasn’t a very good match-up for Venice, with the change-up that (Ebert) had shown. He’d gotten him in the previous at bat. And I thought this might be the only chance we’d have to truly win this game.”
Rosenbaum, who has struggled with the glove, committing 11 errors at shortstop, made no mistake with the bat in his hands.
“I was really excited, it was fun to watch,” he said of his game-winning hit.
Connor Centala closed things out in the ninth, but not before giving up an RBI single to Ryan Mantle and allowing the tying run to reach third before Kennie Taylor – hit in the head by a Kryzsko pitch earlier in the game – grounded out to end it.
Thunder Bay (12-21) next hits the road for eight games.
