By Paul Gotham
CORTLAND, N.Y. — For a fleeting moment Friday night it appeared Tom Taplin (University of Buffalo/via Pulaski HS) lost his control on the mound. An Erik Poldroo (Concordia) line drive back through box caromed off Taplin’s foot and sent the youthful reliever sprawling to the ground.
The Pulaski, New York native recovered and narrowly missed the play at first, but he ran the count to 3-0 on the following batter.
A quick survey of the gathering at Beaudry Park might have elicited the natural conclusions: Had the shot off the foot caused an injury? How much longer would the right-hander stay in the game?
Any concerns received a quick response.
Taplin induced a weak infield pop up. After a sacrifice bunt moved the runner, he struck out the final batter of the game when he pulled the string on a slider.
The high school senior has made two appearances for the Cortland Crush here in this early part of the New York Collegiate Baseball League season. If nothing else, he has established a knack for taking the life out of opposing bats.
“He’s a gamer, man,” Cortland coach Yale Hughes said. “He’s a tough kid. He just throws hard. The kid is just a high school player coming in throwing 90-plus. He’s a good one.”
With Cortland trailing 10-7, Taplin came out of the bullpen to start the eighth and faced the 2,3,4 hitters in the Syracuse Salt Cats lineup. He retired the side in order getting the first batter on a weak a ground ball and fanning the next two.
“The kid’s tough,” Salt Cats coach Mike Martinez said. “He throws hard. He hides it well, and he’s got a little bit of an angle. He’s going to be tough.”
Taplin came on five days previous in Cortland’s season opener at Wellsville. With a runner on second in a tie ball game and one out in the eighth, he struck out the first batter and ended the threat getting an infield pop up. In the ninth he faced the minimum getting a pair of ground balls and a lazy fly to shallow left. The Crush pushed across a pair of runs in their final at bat, and Taplin got the win.
He has pitched three and two-thirds, and the only batter to reach needed to knock him down to get on.
“He has his slider working really well,” battery mate Joel Brophy (Niagara) said. “He can throw it for strikes to start batters out. We were using the slider on the outside half of the plate. They would swing right over it for strikes.”
He has thrown 43 pitches thus far – 28 for strikes. Eliminate the three pitches after the “nice welcome to the league,” (as he referred to it after the game) from Poldroo, and the kid with nothing more than a couple of dangling whiskers on his chin is throwing 70 percent of his pitches for strikes.
“I ended up hitting my spots a lot better today,” Taplin explained. “It was all Brophy, our catcher. He’s calling pitches back there. He knows what he’s doing. I just try to listen to him as much as possible.”
Of the dozen batters he’s faced only one has reached, Poldroo.
“I was amazed that he almost got the guy out at first base,” Hughes said of the play. “At first I’m thinking ‘are you okay?’ Then you look up, and you see the ball, and he almost gets him out at first.”
There was mention of a change up. He hasn’t gone to it yet. Hasn’t needed it. When he does go to that third pitch, it should make him all the more lethal.
For now, Taplin is playing the bugle at the funeral of opposing batters.
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