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Sports

As Raiders Baseball Gets Ready to Go, Player Joe D'Annunzio Shares His Thoughts on the Season

The batter begins his season with more than 100 career hits.

As far as leadoff batters in Union County go, there might not be a better one than Scotch Plains-Fanwood High senior Joe D'Annunzio.

Not only does he have the ability to get on base and set the table for the batters behind him, but he has the power to smash the ball over the fence for a home run.

Two years ago when he moved up to the leadoff spot in the lineup, D'Annunzio took 6-7 hard-throwing righty Chris Jenkins the other way deep for a home run in a game at Westfield. Jenkins said after the game that he threw D'Annunzio his best pitch and gave him credit for hitting it the way he did – which was to right field for a round tripper.

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If you want to have a shot at limiting the Raiders offensively, you better start by retiring D'Annunzio right off the bat.

Last year the righty-batting and righty-throwing left fielder stung the ball for a .494 average, drove in 30 runs – which is pretty good for a leadoff batter – and scored 43 runs.

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His overall play - which earned him First Team All-County honors from The Star-Ledger - helped Scotch Plains fashion one of its best seasons ever as the Raiders went 22-5, captured their fourth Union County Tournament championship and reached the North 2, Group 3 final.

"He's our sparkplug," seventh-year head coach Tom Baylock said. "He started as a freshman and batted eighth or ninth. He gets us going. When he goes, we go. When he gets on base, he can make a lot of things happen with his speed and it just helps everyone else behind him."

D'Annunzio and his teammates are primed for another outstanding season, with seven returning starters back.

Here is what D'Annunzio - who begins his senior season with more than 100 career hits - is thinking right now on a few topics that will impact the upcoming season, which will commence April 1 at Plainfield.

Hitting: "You just try and work hard. Obviously, you try to do better every single day. Hitting is not an easy thing. You work on everything. You start in, you go out, you go up, you go down and you work on all aspects of the game and, hopefully, you progress through."

Keys to being a good leadoff batter: "As a leadoff hitter I try to see some pitches so the hitters behind me can see them, along with just letting the pitcher throw. We're trying to raise his pitch count and get him out of the game early."

Team's offense: "One through nine and even on our bench we're very deep in who we have and our confident in the guys we put out on the field every day. We know that we're a team that score some runs."

Trying to repeat as county champs (the last team to do so was Cranford in 2000): "Every year when you go out - in any sport – you look for county, conference and state and even section. These are, obviously, goals we're trying to get back to and achieve more and finish. We have a very talented group here, with 14 seniors with us. We have a pretty special group."

Team's pitching: "At the top of the rotation Gary (Binkiewicz), of course, is phenomenal and then we're piecing a couple of seniors and juniors together and even some younger kids – a couple of freshmen – so we have depth in the pitching staff. We have to come out and play defense. If they throw strikes and we play defense we're going to be a good team."

Signing with Rutgers last fall: "In all aspects it was phenomenal. I couldn't have been happier signing with coach (Fred) Hill, who's a great coach. Not only with the baseball aspect, but not having to worry about it and go through the process was great. Even with school, it made my school year so much easier, because I just breezed through, pretty much. It was very easy, they helped me through every step of the way and I'm very excited about next year.   

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