- April 18, 2024
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Flagler Palm Coast’s Morgan Lambert has been nearly perfect through the early part of the 2012 season.
Flagler Palm Coast assistant coach Mike Sokol has seen it before: a freshman or sophomore pitcher who has loads of natural ability but can’t quite string together quality innings and games to reach full potential.
That’s not the case at FPC this spring, though. Sophomore pitcher Morgan Lambert is doing something her coach hasn’t seen in his 23 years of coaching.
The Lady Bulldogs are off to 5-0 start this season. (FPC played at Mandarin Tuesday, Feb. 21, in a District 1-8A game.)
A lot of the early season success can be attributed to Lambert, who has been nearly perfect in the pitcher’s circle for FPC. She has started all five games.
Her stats are astronomical, Sokol says.
In the five games, Lambert has appeared in 27 innings, allowed six hits, two runs (zero earned), has 51 strikeouts and has given up just seven walks. Batters are hitting .071. One in seven reaches base. She has thrown a perfect game, two no-hitters and a one-hitter.
Despite being an underclassman, Lambert is used to being on the mound game after game. As a freshman at Calvary Christian, she started all but one game and had a .072 ERA for the season.
Now, Lambert is teamed up with Sokol, which could make life extremely tough for opposing hitters for the next three years.
Sokol, known to many as a pitching specialist, was a coach at FPC for nine years before he left to coach at Daytona State College for the past eight. Now he’s back.
“Morgan is doing things at an earlier age than (previous successful) pitchers I’ve coached,” Sokol says. One of Sokol’s products was Kelsi Dunne, a standout at Spruce Creek High School who is now a prominent player for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
“Most of the freshmen and sophomores can throw the pitches, but can’t locate the pitches,” Sokol says. “That’s what is making Morgan so special. She’s able to locate the pitches with movement. ... It’s quite a feat.”
Location, location, location
Lambert’s repertoire includes a curve ball, a screw ball, a changeup, drop ball and rise ball. While many of her swinging Ks come from the rise ball, Sokol says Lambert has been working a lot on her change.
Lambert, a right-hander, throws her curve ball breaking away from the plate (away from right-handed batters and inside on lefties). Her screw ball works the opposite way. Both pitches are thrown between 58 and 60 mph.
Hitting her spots is important, and so she works five days a week at it. To practice pinpointing each pitch, Lambert throws at a square situated behind home plate. The square has several smaller squares which depict different segments of the strike zone.
Pitch after pitch after pitch, Lambert works on spotting her pitches into those squares. If they aren’t near perfect, they don’t hit the zone. The size of the square is only a fraction larger than the actual softball.
“We will keep concentrating on different locations with different pitches and fine-tune them,” Sokol says. “We are trying to perfect the ability to throw any pitch at any time to any location.”
“We pitch every day,” Lambert says. “That helps with hitting my spots.”
Lambert says she would rather throw a no-hitter than have the walk-off hit. Still, her batting stats in five games jump off the score sheet. She’s currently batting in the cleanup (fourth) spot in the lineup, hitting .562 (nine hits in 16 at-bats) with four doubles and eight RBIs.
In softball, having a dominant pitcher can be a recipe for success. Sokol said keeping the defense aware and ready while having a pitcher on the mound who doesn’t let a lot of balls into play is always a concern.
“We’re constantly talking to the outfielders and infielders just to keep them in the ball game,” Sokol says.
Though it’s early, Sokol is pleased with his team’s production.
“I have a really good feeling about this team,” he says. “They are really hitting the ball, and our defense is working really well. Hopefully everyone comes together and it all kicks in and we have one whale of a season.”
And with only one main pitcher on the roster, Lambert likely will continue trotting to the pitcher’s circle game after game. She’s OK with that.
