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As early as the second inning of his Friday start against Dayton, Wright State’s Jesse Scholtens had a feeling his start could be special.
“I was thinking I hadn’t let anyone on base,” Scholtens said early Saturday morning.
By the eighth inning, thanks in part to a diving catch by Ryan Fucci in center in the middle innings and catcher Jason DeFevers blocking several third-strike dirt balls, the Flyers were still grounded. Scholtens, a senior righthander whose career started at the University of Arizona and included a stop at Diablo Valley (Calif.) College, was six outs from a perfect game.
“The only time I felt pressure was in the eighth inning,” he said. “I started thinking about it.”
With the Raiders clinging to a 1-0 lead – the Raiders mustered only two hits themselves off Mason Kutruff and Austin Cline – Scholtens was starting to think about having to pitch with a guy on base and the game in the balance. Again, he cruised, getting a strikeout, fly out and ground out.
Entering the ninth, Scholtens’ worries had waned.
“I had all the confidence in the world I could get three more outs,” he said.
All the in-game superstitions – teammates lining up for high-fives in the same order as he left the field each inning, teammates standing in the same spots – coupled with Scholtens low-90s fastball, cutter and slider culminated with a strikeout on pitch 101 and the first perfect game in school history. Scholtens’ gem was the 25th Division I perfect game since 1957 according to the NCAA.
“I don’t know if I ever will,” Scholtens said the morning after when asked if what he had accomplished had sunk in. “It was crazy for me to be a part of it.”
Raiders coach Greg Lovelady said: “It was surreal. The whole time, it was like: I can’t believe this is happening. A really weird, weird feeling.”
Lovelady said he, too, thought Scholtens had really good stuff early on. As the perfect game progressed, Lovelady passed the nervous time in between innings chatting with his 3- and 7-year-old sons, who were peppering him with questions about baseball in general.
“It was a good distraction,” he said.
Meanwhile, assistant coach Justin Parker was calling pitches and DeFevers was blocking balls on more than a few of Scholtens’ 12 strikeouts. Lovelady asked Parker if he felt any added pressure calling pitches, to which his assistant said no: “Well, I wasn’t pitching.”
Scholtens was, and like recent perfect gamers Drew Rasmussen (Oregon State, 2015), Javi Salas (Miami, 2014) and Will Roberts (Virginia, 2011), he was brilliant. The one-time Arizona Wildcat who won a Regional game for Wright State last year against Ohio attained what so few at any level in this marvelous game have enjoyed: that perfect feeling.