Bulls Blank Wharton In Tampa

Wharton quickly found themselves in unfamiliar territory on Tuesday. With pinpoint pitching, solid defense and timely batting, Bloomingdale shut-out the Wildcats, 6-0.

In its previous games, Wharton's pitching and batting found them baseball favor. Someone obviously forgot to pass that information along to the Bulls on Tuesday night as they combined to pitch a two hit shut-out and took advantage of Wildcat pitching to total 13 hits on 32 at bats.

Bulls ace Robby Kalaf, coming off of a beautiful 112 pitch performance against Alonso on Friday, continued his magic on the mound against the best Wharton had to offer. Kalaf threw 74 pitches in five innings, striking out six and allowed only 2 hits and no earned runs.

In recent games, it was the Bloomingdale relievers who had not been able to keep pace with its starters. This all changed with the entrance of reliever Austin Wilson. Wilson entered Tuesday night's game in the sixth inning in relief for Kalaf and continued the magic he previously started.

After Kalaf's 2-hit performance, Wilson threw 41 pitches in two innings with three strikeouts and, most importantly, zero Wildcat hits. It was the pitching help the Bulls had been waiting for and it came at the right time.

Prior to Tuesday's game, Wharton boasted some of the best pitching in Hillsborough County. Most notably, pitcher Shaun Rubin who had previously thrown three complete games, earning three wins with an impressive ERA of 0.36.

It was, however, the early start by the Bulls that started the meltdown of the Wildcats pitching staff as they would go on to surrender three runs in the first two innings. Down 3-0, the Wharton pitching staff would give up two additional runs in the fourth and would never recover.

In all, Bloomingdale totaled 13-hits and a .406 BA in their victory and no batter was hotter on Tuesday than junior infielder Richie Martin.

Martin was a nightmare for Wharton pitchers, ending the night 4-for-4 with three runs, two RBI, two doubles and two stolen bases. For his effort he was named as maxpreps.com"Player of the Week." So far in the 2010-11 season, he has a .485 BA in 40 plate appearances.

With the win, Bloomingdale (6-5-0, 3-2-0, second place, 6A Division 8) has expanded their lead against Plant (5-6-0, 2-3-0, fourth place, Division 8) and Wharton (5-5-0, 1-4-0, fifth place, 6A Division 8) in the 6A conference standings.

The Bulls trail Brandon (7-3-0, 3-1-0, first place, 6A Division 8) by one game and are tied for second place with Alonso (6-3-0, 3-2-0, second place, 6A Division 8) in the 6A conference.

Brandon lost their nonconference game to Plant City, 8-4, while Alonso lost to Plant, 1-0. 

Bloomingdale will travel to East Bay to play the first of two games on Friday at 4 p.m.

The Bulls will also be on the road for game 2 as they face Robinson at 7 p.m.