With just one week of regular-season play left, the Mehlville Senior High School baseball team hopes that Friday’s 7-2 win at Marquette is a cure to a losing streak in which the Panthers dropped four of their last six games.
“I think we’re getting it back on track a little bit,” Mehlville head coach Jim Kern said. “We hit a bit of a rough spot where we lost four of our last five. I thought that we had excellent pitching (against Marquette), which in the past couple of weeks is something we had been struggling at.”
Mehlville (13-6, 3-4 Suburban West) scored seven runs on 10 hits as starting pitcher Barry Gregg held Marquette to just one hit in five innings. The junior hurler also struck out six batters and walked three in his third win of the season. Gregg is 3-0 overall with a 3.45 earned run average.
“Barry’s someone that we need throwing well as we go into districts,” Kern said. “The game against Marquette is what we expect from him every time he goes out to pitch.”
Left fielder Kevin Mahler was solid at the plate with a two-for-three performance that included two runs scored, one walk and one stolen base. Mahler is batting .409 with a team-leading 27 runs batted in.
“Kevin’s been hitting the ball very hard,” Kern said. “He’s been very good for us here lately.”
Senior third baseman Josh Ruble also was strong at the dish with a two-for-four showing that included one run batted in, one run scored and one double. Ruble is holding a .358 batting average with 13 runs batted in.
“Josh has really started to come on in the last two to three weeks,” Kern said. “We’re feeling comfortable with him in every opportunity that he’s at bat.”
The Panthers are back in action Friday when they travel to Parkway Central for pool play in the Suburban South/West Conference Tournament. Mehlville then will travel to Lafayette on Monday and Parkway North on Tuesday to face the Lancers and Vikings, respectively.
“The most important thing with the conference tournament is to get some consistency in our hitting and defense,” Kern explained. “We need to make sure that we’re firing on all cylinders before districts.”
All three of the Panthers’ games in the conference tournament are slated for a 4:15 p.m. start.
