This week’s Shorebird of the Week unfortunately saw no action in the past week, but John Mariotti hopefully will return later this season to his earlier form which saw him established as an ace among Shorebirds pitchers. Our Opening Day starter, John was a late scratch from his scheduled start last Friday against Lexington. After a subpar outing in his last start (5 earned runs in 7 innings at West Virginia on April 26th), any adverse signs of physical trouble would be good reason to allow John to skip his next turn. Unfortunately, on Saturday Mariotti was placed on the inactive list, joining four of his teammates.
While John was not a high draft pick (18th round in 2007), the Canadian native and product of Coastal Carolina University has put together an outstanding body of work thus far on his young career. Even with the rough outing against the Power, he’d won three straight starts for Delmarva and given up just 19 hits in 31 innings on the season, striking out 24 while allowing just 5 walks – a superb 0.77 WHIP. These numbers maintain the trend suggested last year when John ran through the New York-Penn League with just a 2-2 record but a nifty 1.46 ERA. (One caveat – the ERA was helped by an unusually high number of unearned runs; 12 of the 18 runs he allowed in 37 innings pitched were unearned.) On the other hand, a good 25-12 ratio of strikeouts to walks and eyepopping 6.3 to 1 ratio of ground outs to fly outs amassed last season as an IronBird suggested John had the stuff to be an ace for the Shorebirds this season.
It’s a shame that a guy honored as the SAL Pitcher of the Week back on April 21st ran into injury trouble so quickly afterward. Let’s hope the 23 year old Mariotti recovers quickly and gets back to mowing down opposition batters, who were hitting only .171 against him this season.
