Royal Palm Tops Douglas In Wible’s Debut As Manager

Jordan Lauginiger will be counted on as the team’s ace this year.

Behind strong starting pitching by Jordan Lauginiger, the Royal Palm Beach Wildcats got off to a good start to the year Monday night by defeating Douglas 4-2 in the HSBN Preseason Challenge at Flanagan High School.

Lauginiger is being thrown into the number one position this year as his twin brother, Justin, last year’s ace, is having to sit out after having Tommy John surgery.

Jordan showed why he’s going to be a fine replacement for the number one role. He allowed five hits and walked two in four innings of work Monday.

“He’s going from being that number two or that closer guy to having to be the guy who comes out and dominates,” first-year Manager Bart Wible said. “He’s going to be the guy who’s going to be very important for us. I’m pretty pleased with what we saw out of him tonight. And the same with Triston [McKenzie]. He’s our number two or three, and he came out and spotted well.”

Lauginiger credits his pitching coach for his strong effort Monday.

“My coach is a phenomenal pitching coach,” Lauginiger said. “He taught me how to throw a split-finger fastball and it worked phenomenally tonight. I just tried to keep it down and it was effective and I got ground balls and that’s all I can ask for. My defense is what got me the win tonight.”

Lauginiger hopes he has many more good outings as the team’s number one.

“It’s a big, big shoe to fill,” Lauginiger said. “My brother was the ace last year, and he ended up getting Tommy John [surgery]. I look up to him because I always wanted to try to beat him out, and to actually get this position, I’m not going to let my coaches down because I think I deserve this.”

Royal Palm took a 1-0 lead in the first courtesy of an error when Chris Rodriguez’s grounder was misplayed in the infield, allowing Brandon Hernandez to score.

Rodriguez smacked a two-out double in the third to bring in Kevin Cordero and then came home during some indecision by the Douglas defense.

Down 3-0, Douglas showed its trademark character trait of not quitting by plating a run as Dominic DiCaprio singled and scored on Anthony Gallo’s base hit up the middle.

Chris Rodriguez drove in a run with a double Monday night.

Royal Palm stretched its lead to 4-1 in the bottom of the fourth. Justin Douglas led off with a single and came home on a Cruz Alcazar’s sacrifice fly.

Douglas narrowed the margin in the fifth after Luis Silverio ripped a double down the left-field line and scored on Michael Greenberg’s base hit.

Despite the strong effort, Wible identified areas that stand improvement.

“We still have some kinks and some things to iron out,” Wible said. “We missed a couple of signs. We had some miscommunication between the pitching-calling and the catcher. That’s things we have to iron out because it affects whole at-bats and makes our pitchers throw more pitches and changes a lot of things, so we definitely want to make sure we get our signs down and we know all of that.”

Still, Wible was content with his team’s effort.

“I’m pretty pleased with the at-bats for the most part. Some guys didn’t have great approaches, swinging at first-pitch curve balls and taking fastballs that are strikes. One of our focuses is aggressiveness at the plate this year. We have a pretty-decent hitting team, and we want to attack those fastballs early in the count.”

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the field, Douglas Manager Todd Fitz-Gerald also was content about his team.

“Offensively, I thought we did a good job,” Fitz-Gerald said. “I thought we ran ourselves out of one inning, out of a run in the first inning. Second and third, there were two outs, we take a strikeout looking. I think we hit like I thought we’d hit. We pitched better than I thought we’d pitch. We played defense not as good as I’d thought we’d play defense.”

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