No. 1 Bridgewater-Raritan faces stiff challenge at rejuvenated, No. 7 Ridge Tuesday

Timely hitting, solid pitching, great fielding.

Those three elements are key to any baseball team, and they’ve been present on a consistent basis for the Bridgewater-Raritan baseball team. Sitting at 13-1 and riding a five-game win streak since a loss to West Morris – their first of the season – Max Newill’s club is poised to get the top seed in the Somerset County Tournament when it’s all figured out next Monday night.

But the key word there is poised, and skids can happen at any time. Just see what happened to the top two teams in the GMC Red Division last week, with Old Bridge and Monroe each going 1-3, and South Plainfield passing both to earn the inside track to the top seed in the league tourney.

On Tuesday, when the Panthers play Ridge on the road, they’ll face a very different Red Devil team than they one they beat 8-4 on April 11th. That loss was Ridge’s fourth in their first five games. They have won nine of ten since.

Tuesday’s game starts at 3:45 pm, with pregame at 3:30 on Central Jersey Sports Radio. Mike Pavlichko will call all the play-by-play; click here to listen.

If you want to know how good the Panthers’ pitching has been, consider that Tuesday’s starter will be Jack Lanum. He’s 2-0 with a 1.17 ERA, which isn’t even the best on the team. The team ERA is 2.07, and they’ve only allowed more than three runs in a game three times, going 2-1 in those games. One of those came Monday, when the Panthers beat Cherokee 5-4 in ten innings at Trenton Thunder Ballpark.

And while the team is hitting under .300, their hits have come at the right time, like Monday, or early, to set the tone, as the Panthers did when they plated three runs in the first last Thursday against Hillsborough en route to an 8-1 road win.

Click below to hear Mike Pavlichko talk with Bridgewater-Raritan head coach Max Newill: