Senators' pitching a big asset

The Haymarket Senators are one of the hottest teams in the Valley Baseball League right now, winning five of their last six games entering Monday night’s road contest at New Market.
The roll has pushed the Senators to second in the North Division at 3-3 against division opponents and 6-4 overall. Perhaps the biggest factor in the recent hot streak has been the pitching that head coach Ryan Fecteau has received from his staff.
Matt Benedict has been one of Fecteau’s most reliable arms and is among the league leaders in several pitching categories. In addition to Benedict, a right-hander from Western Carolina, Fecteau’s rotation has included stout performances from Mark Kuzma and Grant Sasser.
“It’s easy when you get those good, quality starts and guys are going deep,” Fecteau said. “We’ve got a lot of games coming up and I think a lot of guys in the [bull]pen are going to get more innings. We don’t want to burn anyone out.”
Benedict, a rising junior with the Catamounts, currently leads the VBL in opponent batting average at .122 and is tied for fourth in the league in ERA at 0.75.
“He started [Sunday] and that was probably the roughest outing that he’s had,” Fecteau said of a 7-5 win over Harrisonburg. Benedict lasted just three and two-thirds innings, issuing four walks. “He’s been a guy who’s come at hitters and he’s had good sink. He’s been attacking the strike zone.”
With recent rainouts and an upcoming stretch of makeup games, Sasser was moved to the bullpen as a long reliever. Kuzma remains in the rotation and has impressed Fecteau in two starts thus far.
“Mark’s an interesting one because he’s got a chance to be really good as a lefty with the velocity he throws and the stuff he has,” the coach said. “It’s just a matter of being consistent. He’ll have lapses where it gets away from him a little bit. I think if he figures that out you’re going to see seven innings in a start versus five innings.”
“We’ve got guys with good arms on this team and things are looking promising,” said Kuzma, a rising sophomore from Lemoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. “I’ve walked a few guys so I’ve got to work on that, but I feel like I’ve thrown pretty well so far.”
One of the biggest advantages the pitchers have in the league is that everyone is used to playing with and against aluminum bats in college. Long flyballs can quickly turn into home runs in the college game and missing spots can really hurt a pitcher.
“The one thing with wood bats is you don’t have to be as fine. You accept contact more,” said Fecteau, a former pitching coach at Southern Utah. “With metal bats, you’re always pitching away from contact because you’re one pitch away from a home run.”
“It’s like night and day,” Kuzma said of the difference. “You can make a great pitch and it’ll be a homer. Here, you make a great pitch against a wood bat, it’s harder for them to make good contact.”
Kuzma said he’s driven to improve his own skills by what the rest of the pitchers do during their outings.
“It’s tough to throw behind those guys,” he said. “Everybody’s been throwing great. They push you to do better.”
Staff writer Joe Conroy can be reached at (703) 878-8047.