Slowly but surely, the bats are warming up for the Parkland baseball team. And that spells trouble for the rest of the East Penn Conference. In the past week, the Trojans have scored 31 runs in three games, including a 9-0 win over Nazareth (2-2 overall, 2-2 EPC) on Monday and a 15-0 pasting of Central Catholic (0-5, 0-3) last Thursday. In between came a 7-3 win against Wilson-West Lawn, and all of a sudden, Parkland is 4-0 overall and 3-0 in the EPC.

It’s worth noting that the Vikings have been hit hard by everybody, giving up 60 runs in five games this season. Nazareth also doesn’t feature marquee pitching, but it never hurts to heat up by picking up hits against whoever is on the mound.

“We played Wilson-West Lawn and they threw a very good pitcher [Luke Holman] at us and he did a very good job,” noted coach Kurt Weber. “We’ll be seeing some pretty good pitching down the road and our bats are starting to come around a little, but it’s very early. We have to wait to see what happens and how our offense will respond to good pitching.”

The Trojans picked up an early lead with two first-inning runs, one of them being driven in on a double by Joe Webber and the second run scoring on a bases-loaded passed ball. An inning later, with a runner on second and two outs, Blake Barthol singled to make it a 3-0 Parkland lead. A fourth inning run made it a 4-0 game.

Meanwhile, pitcher Adam Smith was just sailing along, at one point retiring eight straight batters. Nazareth looked to get something going when Kyle Mahady reached base on an error to start the inning, but Barthol, who committed the error immediately atoned for the mistake and started an around-the-horn double play. Smith then allowed a single, but pinch-hitter Owen Panovic grounded to second to end the inning.

“That’s what we go by,” said Weber of his team’s pitching and defense. “Even when we made a mistake, I liked how we rebounded, sometimes on the very next batter. That double-play [started by Barthol] was big, and as long as we don’t panic, Adam will keep us in the game.”

On the day, Smith would throw six innings, allowing just one hit and recording four strikeouts.

“Today I was able to locate my fastball and to keep them off balance I was dropping a curveball and kept mixing it up,” Smith said. “Other than that, our defense played great, just like every game, so that was nice. It was just a matter of throwing strikes.”

The Trojans broke the game open in the fifth when they put five runs on the board. Adam Finkbiner came on in relief to start the inning and got the first out before surrendering three straight singles to load the bases.

George Jenkins hit a fly ball to right to score Webber and Phil Schoch kept things rolling with an RBI single to score Austin Imler. Singles from Jeremy Piatkiewicz and Barthol both drove in another run to make it 9-0 and cap the scoring. Barthol’s fifth-inning RBI was his third of the day, a team-high for the Trojans.

“It feels great to have the run support. It takes pressure off of me and I can just go out there and do my thing,” said Smith.

Jenkins went 3-for-4 in the win over Wilson West Lawn (0-3) and Nikhil Patel pitched four and one-third innings to get the win, with Schoch and Koby Staivecki pitching in relief and Staivecki getting the save.

In the win over Central Catholic, which ended after just three innings because of the mercy rule, Piatkiewicz led the team with three hits and Josh Miller drove in a team-high four runs. Miller was also the winning pitcher, striking out four batters in three innings.