WHITEMARSH >> When Plymouth Whitemarsh’s Chase Fisher completed a no-hitter against Hatboro-Horsham with his ninth strikeout of the game, there was no grand celebration. There was no race to the mound, no dog pile, no throwing of gloves. The lefty just walked towards his dugout and fist-bumped third baseman Christian Strunk along the way.
The calm demeanor after a historic performance might seem strange, but it’s fitting for Fisher.
“That is kind of Chase’s personality,” PW coach Chris Manero said after Thursday’s 8-0 Suburban One League Liberty Division win at Colonial Yards. “We talk about that a lot. We know that in order to succeed in baseball you do have to have a very even-keeled personality and Chase is good at that. He shows very little emotion on the mound, but he should know it’s OK to show a little emotion. It doesn’t happen every day. These are those special moments that not everybody gets to have and come very rarely in high school baseball and anywhere. It’s the kind of thing he’ll remember for the rest of his life.”
“Most of us didn’t know,” Strunk said. “I think our job in the dugout was to keep it a secret – not even I knew. Kudos to him, great game.”
Fisher, in his third appearance of the season, threw exactly 100 pitches. He struck out nine batters to four walks and only allowed two runners to reach second base all game. The first was picked off by catcher Chase Olszyk in the fourth inning and the other was stranded on second for the final out.
“It varied inning to inning,” Fisher, who threw a JV no-hitter against Central on April 1, 2022, said. “At the start it was all fastball, curveball. I eventually started to lose the fastball, so a cutter/slider… that picked up the slack of the other pitches. Changeup showed up, disappeared, showed up, disappeared. Every inning it was something different was the one that was working.”
Once the no-hit bid was established, Fisher didn’t face too many scares. The best defensive play of the day may have been centerfielder Kevin Hagerty running down a fly ball in the right-center gap against the Hatters leadoff batter in the top of the first inning.
Fisher struck out the next five batters to get through the second inning and three groundballs to second base made for a quick third. He walked two batters in the fourth, but Olszyk’s pick-off at second base and a strikeout put two outs on the board. The ender came on a screaming line drive to first base that Colin Brady gloved.
“The defense made plays behind him,” Strunk said. “Not a lot of balls in play, kept it to strikeouts. That’s what we want from our guy. Keep (the bullpen) fresh for tomorrow.”
“He really only ever had one inning where he got in a little bit of trouble,” Manero said. “He was throwing several different pitches for strikes, which was really good. He was getting ahead of guys. He just really seemed to be in command.”
After a fifth inning that featured two groundouts and a pop out in foul territory, shortstop Gabe Caucci made a nice play on a groundball up the middle to start the top of the sixth inning. A fly ball to left field and a strikeout sent Fisher to the seventh with his no-hit bid in tact.
A leadoff walk and an error on a pickoff attempt put a runner in scoring position, but Fisher finished the job with a fly ball to left field and two strikeouts.
“We didn’t have really great approaches,” Hatboro-Horsham coach Bill DeBoer said. “I kind of let it happen the first time through and figured the second time through they would make some adjustments. Even after talking, they just didn’t make adjustments. Too many guys were looking at me when they were swinging and that’s just pulling your head out, trying to kill the ball. Those softer-throwing lefties, you think you can kill it, and then all of a sudden it’s not there and that happened way too often today. We took a lot of pitches that were good, hittable pitches and now we’re buried in the count.”
The Colonials (2-2, 2-0 SOL Liberty) offense got going in the second inning when it capitalized on three walks to the first four batters. With one out, Strunk hit a seeing-eye single past a diving shortstop to score two runs.
“I went to the plate and took first strike just because he has to get one over first,” Strunk said. “From there, next pitch I see that’s a strike, just attack. Put something in play, put something hard on the ground and it’s better than a fly ball. That was my goal there.”
Two batters later, Caucci doubled the lead to 4-0 with a two-out, two-run single.
Strunk had an RBI groundout in the third inning to make it 5-0 before PW blew the game open in the fifth. Pinch hitter Ryan Heincer and Olsyzk hit RBI doubles and Johnny Giordano an RBI single to extend the lead to 8-0.
“It was good to get some big hits in the middle there and do some things,” Manero said, “but you always want a little bit more. We could have had a little bit more if we had some better at-bats.”
Jamie O’Neil took the loss for the Hatters (1-2 , 1-2 SOL Liberty). In two innings he allowed five runs on two hits while striking out three batters to six walks. Cole Reinheimer threw 2 2/3 innings in relief, striking out four batters to three walks and surrendering three runs on four hits. Ryan Thomas recorded the final four outs, allowing no runs on two hits with two strikeouts and one walk.
“We’ll be better,” DeBoer said. “There’s too much talent here to not get better. We need to come together a little bit more as a team.”
Plymouth Whitemarsh 8, Hatboro-Horsham 0
Hatboro-Horsham 000 000 0 – 0
Plymouth Whitemarsh 041 030 x – 8
WP: Chase Fisher 7 IP 9 K 4 BB 0 H 0 R
LP: Jamie O’Neil 2 IP 3 K 6 BB 2 H 5 R
2B: PW: Ryan Heincer, Chase Olszyk
