Vega, Wildkits Slide Past Lane Into Sectional Title Game

Major league hitters don’t relish facing a pitcher with a good slider.

Neither do college hitters.

High school hitters? Forget about it.

Lane Tech’s baseball team had no chance Wednesday afternoon at the Class 4A Evanston Sectional tournament as ETHS right-hander Eron Vega turned in another brilliant postseason performance on the mound.

The junior righty, who has already won two regional tournament games in his career, thrived with a devastating slider Wednesday in his most impressive postseason outing to date. He limited Lane Tech to just 2 hits in 6 innings of work as the Wildkits advanced to the sectional championship game with a 7-0 blanking of the Champions

Evanston, now 31-7 on the season, will face the winner of Thursday’s other semifinal game --- either New Trier or Glenbrook North --- in the title game Saturday at 11 a.m.

Vega’s slider didn’t produce the usual number of strikeouts against a free-swinging Lane Tech squad, which finished 24-14. The No. 5 seeded Champions only fanned 4 times, but soft contact didn’t produce much traffic on the bases, either.

Lane Tech’s only hits were an infield single by Zach Shashousa leading off the 2nd inning and a 1-out single by Jack Pellikan in the 5th. Vega faced just 1 batter above the minimum in his last 4 innings on the mound before Hank Liss came on to mop up with a scoreless 7th.

Evanston head coach Frank Consiglio didn’t need that shutout effort to realize that he now has TWO aces he can rely on when it’s their turn on the mound.

“Eron Vega’s been our best pitcher for the last 3 weeks now,” said Consiglio. “He battles, he executes, and he’s tough out there. He didn’t want to come out of the game. He gave us the biggest boost today so now we feel like we have two No. 1s. That’s a nice feeling.

“When you dominate like that in a playoff game, against a good-hitting team like Lane, that elevates him even more. He put them away today. He took a big step in a big moment.”

Vega had to overcome a 90-minute delay to the start of the game due to reported lightning strikes within 10 miles of Evanston. School officials had moved the start of the game up 2 hours to try to accommodate Lane Tech’s graduation ceremony scheduled for later that night, but the players were pulled off the field a total of 5 different times during pre-game warmups.

Starting and stopping isn’t part of the usual pre-game routine for any pitcher at any level, but Vega’s maturity and ability to execute that slider helped the Wildkits deal with the situation.

“I warmed up twice today,” Vega said. “I was really frustrated at first, and it got into my head that it was going to affect my velo (velocity). I just decided I could only control what I could control, though, and I just tried to go out and pitch my game.

“In the first inning Coach (Chris) D’Amato called a lot of sliders and they couldn’t touch it really all game. I threw it about 70 percent of the time, and that’s the most I’ve ever thrown it. My best pitch last year was my change-up, but I’ve got to give thanks to Hank Liss because he’s been helping me a lot trying to master the slider. I never felt I could throw it that often and that effectively before, but I really felt comfortable with it today. That felt awesome!

“I was riding high coming off that regional semifinal game last week, and I think I took another step forward today.”

Consiglio credited a solid game plan that Vega followed to the letter in what would have been a complete game shutout if Liss didn’t need an inning of work to sharpen his deliveries ahead of an expected start in Saturday’s championship showdown.

“We knew Lane Tech was a good-hitting team, and that they had some hackers,” he said. “So we wanted Eron to stay down with his fastball and his slider against them. We wanted to make them try to beat us down in the (strike) zone. That’s exactly what happened. We didn’t give them anything, they had to earn it.”

The top-seeded home team bunched 4 hits together in the 2nd inning to take a 2-0 lead against Lane right-hander Jacob Maza. Brandon Brokowski’s leadoff single started the rally, and one out later Sam Sheikh laced a single to right that scored pinch-runner Jack Kaplan.

Consecutive singles by James O’Connor and Braden Grimm pushed home the second run before Maza prevented further damage by retiring Charlie Kalil on a line drive to second with the bases loaded and two outs.

Evanston scored again in the 5th, thanks to a leadoff triple by the No. 9 hitter --- Dylan Denlow --- and Kalil’s sacrifice fly. The Wildkits tacked on 4 more runs in the 6th against Lane’s bullpen to break the game open, including RBI singles by Grimm and Kalil, plus Denlow’s sacrifice fly.

Vega improved to 6-1 on the season but probably won’t consider himself as an “ace” during this postseason run with so many other ways that ETHS can win an arms race in the state tournament series.

“I think we have the best pitching staff right now,” said the junior. “We have 4 or 5 guys who can touch 90 (miles per hour). If I didn’t do well today, we have guys like Braden Grimm or Henry Rouch (both juniors) who can come in and touch 90. And our bullpen is really deep, too. This is a really deep pitching staff.”