Blue Mountain’s left-handed ace Dylan Sattazahn showed why he has been so tough to beat this season.

On Monday against Lehighton, Sattazahn was locating pitches and was dominant from the onset in a key Schuylkill League Division 1 match-up.

Sattazahn’s strong pitching performance - paired with timely hitting - helped Blue Mountain (14-4, 10-1) come away with a 4-2 league win. The victory clinched the division title for the Eagles.

The Tribe (12-7, 8-4) needed to win to cement themselves in the Schuylkill League playoffs as the Division 1 wildcard. With the loss, Lehighton now needs Pine Grove to lose one of its next two league games to secure a league berth. If the Cardinals win those two games, they would force a one-game tiebreaker to determine the wild card team.

Sattazahn didn’t waste any time sitting down Lehighton batters, striking out 11 Indians through the first four innings.

“I’ve been saying this throughout the whole year, that I believe Sattazahn is the best pitcher in our league,” said Blue Mountain head coach Jarrod Kramer. “He’s a dominating pitcher, and he was pounding the strike zone today, which is what we needed him to do.

“When he throws strikes and is on like he was today, he is really tough to beat. But also credit to Lehighton today, because he’s been going the distance in most of these games, and he had to come out in the sixth. They had some good at bats.”

The Indians were held scoreless through the first six innings, struggling to take advantage when they did get runners on base. The Eagles did a much better job of converting base runners into runs.

Blue Mountain first got on the board in the third inning on an RBI single from Kory Faust to left field, and then put together its biggest inning in the fourth.

A double steal from the Eagles helped force a Lehighton error, which scored a run. Following that, a Bert Gormley line-drive single to left scored another to make it 3-0. Blue Mountain also added an insurance run in the top of the seventh on a Will Jacobson sacrifice fly.

“We work on situational hitting a lot in practice,” said Kramer. “Infield in and infield back, and some other stuff, and that all really came into play today.

“We ran that double steal and that worked out for us, getting a run out of that, and then getting that insurance run in the seventh ended up being really big for us. That was a great at-bat by Jacobson.”

Trailing 4-0, Lehighton made things very interesting.

A two-run single by Austin Greene with two outs off reliever Ryan Grace - who needed to come in after Sattazahn reached 100 pitches - gave the Indians life. But Grace was able to get the final out of the inning with a strikeout to end the game.

“Credit to Blue Mountain first and foremost,” said Lehighton head coach J.C. Dietz. “That is a really good team, and their pitcher was great today, but they also made some really good defensive plays that stopped us from a few rallies.

“I think the difference was, we just couldn’t get that big hit when we needed to leading up to the last inning. But our guys played hard. Ian Rarick was tough again from the mound for us, and these kids, they just battle all the time. No matter the score, they never quit.”

AT THE PLATE

… Aidan Rarick led the Indians from the plate, going 2-for-3 with a triple. Brady Gustitus led the Eagles with three hits.

LEFTY

… Sattazahn was once again dominant, pitching 5 1/3 innings, striking out 14. He improved to 8-0 on the season with an ERA below 1.00.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

... Lehighton needs Pine Grove to lose to either Pottsville or North Schuylkill to claim the Division 1 wildcard spot. If the Cards don’t lose, a tiebreaker game would take place on Saturday at a time and place to be determined.

Blue Mtn. 001 200 1 - 4 7 0

Lehighton 000 000 2 - 2 9 4

Sattazhan, R. Grace (6) and Gustitus; I. Rarick, Albert (7) and Light. W - Sattazahn. L - I. Rarick.