Chatham Bats Silenced Against Jefferson

The Chatham Cougars baseball team struggled on Friday afternoon, falling to Jefferson High School, 5-0 in Chatham.

In a game that didn't show any offense for the Cougars, Head Coach Doug Chambers looked to find positives.

"Well, we improved two parts of our game today," he said. "We had a little bit better pitching and defensively we played better today."

Starting pitcher Brendan Kaufman struggled early, giving up five runs on nine hits in his first two innings of work, but settled down.

He would record a complete game, not giving up another run in the contest and striking out four, despite allowing two runners on base in each of his final four innings of work.

"He threw a full seven innings and kept his pitch count down," Chambers said. "He pitched out of a few situations, which is good for him because he somewhat of a young pitcher. But five runs in the first two innings, we need to cut that stuff out."

Although giving up five runs to start a game is never ideal, the real issue comes with Chatham's offense, .or lack thereof.

Jefferson starting pitcher Stephen Cuccio kept the Cougars' bats in check—a problem that has plagued Chatham for the past few games—allowing no runs on only four hits while striking out eight.

Cuccio seemed to get stronger as the game progressed, recording five of his strikeouts after the fourth inning.

Even during the rare innings where Chatham would get runners on base, they struggled to find a big hit, hitting into three double plays on the day.

In fact, the offensive woes were so bad that no Cougar hitter reached base safely more than one time, five not reaching base at all.

"We've got to find some way to get on track," Chambers said. "I think some guys are just getting in their heads a little bit. They have one poor at bat and they start questioning themselves."