Malverne baseball now 11-0 after 11-run second inning in victory

Valley Stream South led by four and Malverne hadn’t scored heading for the bottom of the second. Could this be the day the Mules would finally lose?

They certainly weren’t thinking that way after going 10-for-10 — 10 games, 10 wins.

“I was pretty confident,” senior centerfielder Matt Merkel said. “We have a good group of guys here. When they put the bat on the ball, we’ll get hits, get runs.”

And, wow, did this baseball team get runs in that second. Malverne sent 16 batters to the plate and crossed it 11 times.

“That’s how we roll,” Merkel said.

The Mules rolled to a 15-5 win Thursday to sweep the three-game, Nassau Countywide I series. The game was stopped due to the 10-run mercy rule when they scored once in the fifth.

So make them 11-0. And this was supposed to be a rebuilding year after 11 seniors departed.

What’s gone right?

“Surprising play from a lot of the younger guys,” coach Joe Dunn said.

After Juan Peralta opened the Malverne second with the first of his two singles in the inning and three hits in the game and Peter Krapf followed by drawing a walk, Valley Stream South coach Rich Hess brought sophomore righty Nick Simone in from center to replace starter Peter Greif.

But the Mules totaled five more hits in the rally and the Falcons made four errors. 

Gennaro Izzo delivered a two-run single for a 5-4 edge.

Merkel drove in three in the inning, taking a bases-loaded walk to cut it to 4-2 and grounding a two-run single into left to make it 10-4. 

“When you put the ball in play, good things are going to happen,” Dunn said.

Simone, who was a force offensively with two singles, a walk, an RBI, three runs scored and six steals, handled the difficult frame well, saying, “I was fine.” 

But Hess said, “It’s painful.”

The Falcons dropped their seventh straight after a 5-0 start.

“We’ve got youth,” Hess said, “but we’re going to go through the growing pains for the tree to bear some fruit.”

Mules starter Alex Daly earned the win. The junior righty settled down after those first two innings, allowing four hits and fanning nine in five.

“Once we got up a little bit,” Daly said, “I stopped stressing out so much and just stopped getting in my own head, where I just was able to go throw strikes after.”