Staff Report
Take a look at any of the teams involved in the recent NJSIAA baseball state championship games, and chances are you’ll find a really good catcher behind the dish.
Catchers control the game and have a huge impact on how well a pitching staff performs, and if you can find one that can hit, well, you’ve hit the jackpot. Kingsway Regional’s A.J. Ward only had 43 at-bats and hit just .223 as a junior, but he had an incredible senior season, hitting .393 with 33 hits — more than three times his career hits total prior to his senior year — including five doubles and a whopping 35 RBIs.
Ward worked himself into a middle-of-the-order bat and carried the Dragons all the way to the Group 4 state championship game, where they fell by one run in the title game. Ward was on base 48 times 99 plate appearances, and there were only a handful of games in which he didn’t reach base.
In the final game of his career, Ward went 3-for-4 with a pair of RBIs, helping Kingsway rally from an early 7-0 deficit. He was also a fine defensive catcher with a strong throwing arm, and under his guidance the Dragons’ pitching staff had a combined 2.40 ERA with 224 strikeouts in 192 innings, and Kingsway allowed just 66 earned runs in 30 games.
— Staff Writer Dave O’Sullivan
