Barrett leads Men of Troy with masterful pitching performance that tames mighty host Crown Point with 10-K run that leads Chesterton past No. 2 Bulldogs 1-0 in epic suspense thriller

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Those fortunate enough to have spent their Cinco de Mayo evenings at the baseball diamond at Crown Point High School on Tuesday, won’t soon, if ever, forget the virtuoso performance they witnessed from left-hander Troy Barrett, a diminutive giant of a pitcher.
In leading Chesterton to a 1-0 victory rife with suspense from the game’s opening pitch to the final out, Barrett tossed six shutout innings, struck out 10 and in the process at once showed shades of a right-handed Greg Maddux and escape artist Houdini.
The Trojans ensured the 105-pitch effort would not go for naught by scoring a run in the top of the seventh when Isaiah Prater beat out a two-strike, two-out infield hit with a dive into first base to score Ethan Glassman from third with two outs. Rob Czarniecki secured the save, coming in from center field to pump gas for a 1-2-3 seventh.
Chesterton played flawless defense in support of Barrett, the biggest plays supplied by Nate Redman, who dove for a run-saving catch in the second inning and junior catcher Caden Hackett, who used his considerable quickness to turn a couple of high and wide would-be wild pitches into harmless balls with men on base and blocked another ball and tagged the hitter for the third out of the sixth inning on Barrett’s final pitch.
As memorable as was the duel between Chesterton’s 5-foot-9, Purdue-bound Barrett and Indiana recruit Logan Johnston, a 6-foot-5 right-handed senior (complete game five-hitter, one walk, five strikeouts), a duel within that duel rose above it in terms of intensity.
Coming into the day, Barrett had walked just three batters in 26 innings. In the fifth inning Tuesday night, he lost No. 8 hitter Cody Trapp to a leadoff walk and Trapp moved to second on Caden Matusak’s two-out walk, giving Barrett three walks for the day against the Bulldogs, ranked No. 2 in the 4A poll.
The wheels of his command were wobbling. Something had to change, but head coach John Bogner didn’t want it to be his pitcher, so Bogner made one of those crafty decisions that can be lost in a game brimming with so much drama. He turned to assistant coach Toby Gentry in the dugout and said, “Do you want to go talk with him?” Translation: Go talk with him.
The quietly intense Barrett was mad at himself and the deeply respected Gentry’s words of encouragement and belief washed away the voice in the pitcher’s head and hit the reset button with Crown Point’s best player coming to the plate.
“He said great pitching beats great hitting every time, and that they trust me, and... basically that I was, I was going to get them out, and not let them score,” was how Barrett recounted Gentry’s message.
The second walk extended the inning so that Sean Dunlap, Prep Baseball Report’s pick as the No. 1 prospect in the state, could go to the plate. Barrett retired him in his first two trips on a groundout to second and a swinging strikeout.
It doesn’t always work this way, of course, but it sure felt as if whichever high school baseball superstar won this confrontation would win the game. And in this case, it held true.
Not only is Dunlap a great talent, he had an advantage that no other hitter than Barrett’s batterymate Hackett would have in facing him.
“I played travel ball with him for two years now,” on Five Star Great Lakes, Barrett said. “He’s a great friend of mine and it was just nice to get him out. What makes it even better is he has caught me 20 plus times so he knows all my pitches, so it makes it a little more special not letting him get any hits.”
Knowing all of Barrett’s pitches doesn’t mean any hitter ever knows which one is coming, and therefore which direction it will be moving, and to which quadrant of the strike zone. Four different movements, four different velocities, four different quadrants. And he has confidence in throwing any pitch on any count.
Therein lies the rub in trying to hit Barrett, who has amassed 63 strikeouts in 32 innings.
He throws the same four pitches Maddux did in winning back-to-back-to-back Cy Young Awards: A sinking fastball, a cut fastball, a curveball and a circle changeup, so named because of the grip on the side of the ball.
Here’s how each of Barrett’s pitches looks to right-handed hitters: The sinking fastball moves down and tails away. The next fastest pitch, the cut fastball, takes a late, sharp, horizontal cut inward, leaving the hitter susceptible to getting jammed. The curveball takes a big dive downward and goes a little inward, sometimes making a pitch that looks like a high-and-outside ball brush the black of the outside corner within the north-south boundaries of the strike zone. The circle change moves down and in, the movement not as vertical as a curveball and not as horizontal as the cut fastball.
“He can place his fastball anywhere he wants, and then all of his other pitches work great off it,” Hackett said.
Like Maddux, it all starts with the sinking fastball. Barrett probably throws more curveballs than Maddux, who probably threw more cutters than Barrett. But it’s all to the same end, keeping the hitter off balance with changing speeds, alternating movements and varied locations.
The only thing the hitter knows for certain is that the next pitch will be in a different location when it crosses the plate than when he triggers his bat, but which different location, and at what speed?
It’s a lot for a high school hitter to process, even one as talented and as armed with knowledge of the pitcher as Barrett’s summer catcher.
It doesn’t hurt that Barrett makes it all come together with a feel for pitching that belies his birth certificate.
The at bat: Foul ball, Ball 1, foul, Ball 2, foul, Ball 3, two more foul balls and then Dunlap put the ball in play, grounding other way to Prater, who tossed to first baseman Eli McClelland. The Houdini act was the second great escape of the day for the pitcher who has been brought back carefully from offseason elbow surgery that removed a bone spur.
The first escape came in the second inning, when both teams mounted threats. Chesterton sophomore Gary Kirkland reached on a one-out double to the warning track in right. Dylan Bradford took first when hit by a pitch. Glassman bounced into a force at third and Redman hit a ball hard to center that Brody Langhans ran down several steps toward left to enable Johnston to preserve his shutout bid.
Gaines led off the bottom of the inning with a double to the corner in right and Andrew Long walked. Carson Payne hit a ball to right that left Redman with a bang-bang decision: let it fall in front of him or dive for it. He made the right call and snared it just before it hit the turf.
Trapp hit a one-hop single to right to load the bases and Houdini escaped by getting the next two batters to swing at Strike 3.
In the third, Matusak, a Michigan recruit, reached for the Bulldogs on a one-out single to center and Barrett struck out Dunlap and retired Gaines on a grounder back to him. Barrett struck out the side in order in the fourth giving him seven strikeouts through four innings, the fifth and seventh Ks coming on called third strikes.
Czarniecki had led off the sixth with a walk and was removed for pinch runner Sullivan Fleming, a fellow burner, and for a brief eternity a dreadful thought occurred: Oh, no, the player of the year candidate isn’t being removed for an injury, is he? The thought quickly passed given that players don’t get injured strolling to first base. Bogner used the opportunity for Czarniecki to go out to the bullpen to warm up, in the likely event he would come in to pitch in the sixth or seventh.
Gaines led off the bottom of the sixth inning of a still scoreless game with a single and stole second. Barrett struck out Long for the first out and retired Payne on a fly to right. Bogner visited Barrett on the mound.
Purdue’s head coach, Greg Goff, and pitching coach, Josh Newman, were in the crowd, as were Indiana’s pitching coach, Matt Myers, and about eight scouts working for Major League Baseball clubs.
“We’re still monitoring his arm and Purdue’s here looking at him,” Bogner said. “His parents are here. I know he has a life after high school baseball and that is my biggest priority is his ultimate health. But he’s also a senior who would never lie to me and he’s a competitor.”
The decision to grant Barrett his wish and face one more batter was not one the coach made alone.
“His mom was involved. His dad was involved,” Bogner said. “Troy even asked the Purdue coach (earlier) and the Purdue coach said, ‘Ask your coach.’”
Barrett’s final pitch, in the turf, was swung through for Strike 3, Hackett expertly blocked the ball and tagged the batter and Barrett’s day of brilliance was in the books. The only thing left was for the Trojans to score a run and Czarniecki to close the door on the Bulldogs so Barrett he could put a W next to his name.
It took a team effort in the seventh inning to make sure the effort did not go for naught.
Bradford reached on a one-out infield hit and moved to second on Glassman’s big single to right. Johnston struck out a swinging Redman and got ahead of Prater, the No. 9 hitter. Upon the second strike, Prater shifted into the two-strike approach that Bogner preaches incessantly. Prater came up a couple of inches on the bat, crouched and spread out his stance. He made contact with a grounder to a spot that left Matusak, the shortstop, with his momentum going the opposite direction of his throw and he wasn’t able to plant and fire a throw to first that had ideal mustard on it.
Baserunners are always advised to run through the bag because diving doesn’t get you there any more quickly and risks injury. Sometimes instincts make them launch into a headfirst slide anyway. That’s what Prater did and he was safe as Bradford scored what stood up as the game’s only run.
“I’ve been playing with him since he was 8 and he’s always been the clutchest athlete I’ve ever played with,” Hackett said.
Prater sang the praises of the two-strike approach and given his big day it’s not as if he did so to place a shiny apple on the teacher’s desk.
“We do it program-wide,” Prater said of the adjustments. “It helps a lot because you cover more of the plate …. and you’re kind of like already in your launch so it’s a shorter swing, so it helps a lot.”
Czarniecki followed Prater and came up with runners on the corners and hit a sharp grounder that popped out of Matusak’s glove and this time the shortstop fired a pea to first. Safe or out? Too tough for the naked eye to determine, but a call had to be made one way or the other. Remember, a tie goes to the runner. The verdict: out. That meant Czarniecki would need to take the mound in pursuit of a save without the luxury of an insurance run, so this was no time to start walking people. And he didn’t.
Czarniecki fits the prototype of a big, strong flamethrowing closer putting all his might into every pitch. His fastball dominates high school hitters. Walks occasionally make his saves more interesting. Not on this night. The loudest noise in the bottom of the seventh was the sound of Czarniecki’s fastball hammering Hackett’s mitt.
Langhans popped Czarniecki’s first pitch high in the air. Czarniecki wheeled around and pointed straight in the air. Tracking it all the way, Prater kept backing up until he was standing on the outfield grass and smothered it for the first out. Nomikos Zaronias struck out swinging and Nathan Sheets lined softly to first baseman Eli McClelland for the final out. Czarniecki came off the mound and planted an ’attaboy shove on Prater for delivering in the clutch.
Czarniecki has not yet allowed a run in five appearances covering six innings. He has given up just one hit, walked four and struck out 11. Combined, Czarniecki and Barrett have faced 141 batters and struck out more than half of them, 74 to be exact.
The game itself was so compelling that it overshadowed the implications of the outcome. Chesterton (16-4 overall, 9-0 in the DAC, ranked No. 9 in the 4A poll) moved two games ahead of Crown Point (15-3, 7-2, No. 2) and Valparaiso (14-4, 7-2, No. 10).
The Trojans’ remaining DAC series come vs. Portage (12-7, 5-4, tied for fourth with Lake Central) next week and Valpo the week after that.
Hackett will catch Dylan Bradford in today’s series finale at Chesterton.
A varsity player since his freshman season, Hackett knows Barrett’s repertoire better than anybody and was quick to point out that his fastball, which touches the mid-80s, “is good, especially for someone his size. It’s been three years and it’s been great working with him the whole time. I’m trying to soak in every moment I can because he’s graduating this year.”
Barrett doesn’t need to throw as hard as Czarniecki to dominate, as illustrated by his 7-0 record and 0.66 ERA this season and 21-2 record for a varsity career that started his sophomore season.
Bogner colorfully pointed out that how much fear Barrett strikes into those who see him depends on the context of the meeting.
“He could possibly get up to 300 strikeouts,” Bogner marveled of Barrett, whose career total is 241. “If you saw that guy in an alley, you wouldn’t run the other way. But if I saw him on the mound, I might tinkle.”