Baseball: Peekskill Tides off to Hot Start

The Peekskill Tides, members of the Westchester Rockland Wood Bat League, have gotten off to a flying start as they lead the league with an 8-1 record.

The teams in the league are made up of mostly college-aged players, with a few men in their 20s or 30s also playing.

Peekskill manager Chris Jones says his team has gotten off to the hot start that it has because it is executing at all three facets of the game: pitching, hitting and fielding.

Making up half of the Tides 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation is Peekskill native and 1997 Walter Panas graduate Shawn Tarkington, who is 1-0 with a glittering 1.80 earned run average.

The other half of that duo is Corey Borowitz, who is 3-1 with a 2.14 ERA.

“They are bookends,” Jones said. “Tark is 6-foot-5, 250 pounds, a righty who throws hard, has a fastball, slider and change-up. Corey is 5-11, 195-pound lefty who is on the corners and on the edges. They are completely different style pitchers.”

Two other key contributors to the pitching staff are former Putnam Valley strike-out machine Pat Considine and Jim Schult, who was named the American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings Division III Co-Player of the Year while playing for Eastern Connecticut.

“We are getting outstanding starting pitching,” Jones said. “Our team ERA is somewhere just under 2.00 or around 2 (1.99). So when you allow teams to just two runs, you are in a good place.”

The Tides, who play their home games at Peekskill Stadium, are also at a good place when it comes to their hitting. They are led by No. 2 hitter Carmine Caputo, who has a .375 batting average.

Caputo teams up with lead-off hitter Matt Maher to form a killer combination at the top of the Tides’ order.

“Carmine and Matt are at the top of our lineup and are very much a part of our engine,” Jones said. “They are both dynamic guys who can hit the ball for power. They can put a bunt down, they will run. Both are very fast and they drive the opposing pitcher crazy. It is because of them that the middle our lineup sees more fastballs and Kevin (Madison) is the beneficiary of that.”

Madison, who bats cleanup, is second on the team among the full-timers in batting average, hitting at a .360 clip while leading the Tides in RBI with eight.

“That kind of production is vital to our success,” Jones said.

Having that type of production, combined with table setters like Caputo and Maher, leads to performing in the clutch at the plate.

“We’ve gotten a lot of timely hitting,” Jones said. “We’ve had several late-inning come from behind, come from behind is kind of an overused term, but maybe games where we are down one or two runs and we need a big hit in a big spot or we need to execute a bunt, move a runner over in a big spot and we have done that pretty darn well.”

The Tides have also done well in the field negating the opposition’s scoring opportunities.

“We are not giving away outs on the field,” Jones said. “We have been very clean in the field. We’re not facing an extra batter or two extra batters because we are fielding the routine ground balls.”

The Tides will play the Pleasantville Red Sox in New Rochelle on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at Salesian High School and will host a double-header at home, 6 and 9 p.m. on Sunday against the Rye Patriots.