Jeff Brigham may have felt a bit under the weather Friday afternoon, but that didn’t stop the Thomas Jefferson righthander from delivering a gem on the mound.<\/p>\n
Brigham, a junior, allowed just five hits and one earned run while striking out 13 batters, leading the Raiders past Kentridge at Kent Memorial Park 5-2 in a pivotal South Puget Sound League North Division game.<\/p>\n
“I am a little bit sick right now,” lamented Brigham, whose 13 whiffs are a season high. “I think I have the flu.”<\/p>\n
Sick or not, Brigham’s performance certainly gave the Raiders (8-5) a big shot in the arm. TJ came into the game battling with Kentridge (7-6) and Kentlake (7-6) for one of the final two playoff berths from the North. The top four teams advance to the postseason. The loss dropped Kentridge into a tie for fourth place with Kentlake, which knocked off Federal Way Friday afternoon, 13-12. The Chargers beat the Falcons twice earlier this week and essentially hold the tie-breaker if the two teams finish in a dead heat.<\/p>\n
“This game would have been huge for us,” said Kentridge coach John Flanigan, pointing out that the Chargers already had beaten the Raiders once this season. “Now we’ve got a lot of work to do.”<\/p>\n
Kentridge has Kent-Meridian, Auburn and Federal Way \u2014 all of which are under .500 \u2014 remaining on the schedule. Three wins would guarantee the Chargers of a playoff berth.<\/p>\n
Jefferson took over third place in the North with the win.<\/p>\n
And the Raiders have Brigham to thank for it. The junior got off to a rough start, loading the bases in the first despite not allowing a hit. Brigham hit a pair of Kentridge batters and walked another.<\/p>\n
“I was a little bit rusty early,” Brigham said. “I was just trying to get my fastball down early so I could work in my other pitches.”<\/p>\n
It was just Brigham’s second start of the season as has spent much of the spring coming out of the bullpen. His other was a no-hitter against Kentwood on April 8. It remains Kentwood’s lone North Division loss of the season.<\/p>\n
“There’s no question, from here on out, he’s our ace,” said Jefferson coach Mike Church. “We knew he had good stuff. Now he showed he can throw a complete game.”<\/p>\n
Brett Fitzgerald gave the Raiders a lead in the second inning with a long solo home run to straightaway left field. Branden Muraki followed with a walk and later came home on a run-scoring single down the right-field line by Harold Adams.<\/p>\n
Kentridge responded in the bottom half of the second, when Andrew Martin worked a lead-off walk, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt and scored moments later on a single to center field by Cory Hamada.<\/p>\n
With a 2-1 lead, Brigham toughened. He allowed just three hits \u2014 all singles \u2014 between the second and the sixth innings. Along the way, he racked up eight strikeouts.<\/p>\n
“He has really good offspeed pitches and his fastball really sets that up,” Hamada said. “He knows how to pitch. He knows how to be efficient.”<\/p>\n
Jefferson tacked on one more in the fourth. Muraki worked a lead-off walk and came around on a single by Johnny Palko. Palko drove a low liner into center field that Kentridge outfielder Jason Didis couldn’t quite reach with a shoe-string try. The ball skirted past Didis, allowing Muraki to score.<\/p>\n
The Chargers loaded the bases with one out in the seventh, but were only able to get one run out of the rally. Brigham induced a game-ending double play to seal the win.<\/p>\n
Flanigan was impressed with the TJ pitcher.<\/p>\n
“He’s one of the better (pitchers) we’ve seen,” Flanigan said. “He throws three pitches for strikes and can hump up a fastball when he needs to. It looked like he was throwing harder in the seventh than in the first. What I saw was, he wanted it. He wanted to go out and win that game, and he took it on his shoulders and wasn’t getting tired. He was getting stronger.”<\/p>\n
Shayne Mathews, who collected a pair of singles, was the only Kentridge player with more than one hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeff Brigham may have felt a bit under the weather Friday afternoon, but that didn’t stop the Thomas Jefferson righthander from delivering a gem on the mound. Brigham, a junior, allowed just five hits and one earned run while striking out 13 batters, leading the Raiders past Kentridge at Kent Memorial Park 5-2 in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}