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Nathan Sutherlin named Putnam County Baseball Player of the Year
Greencastle knew it had a strong building block of freshmen coming in ahead of the 2023 season.
With a squad short on experience returning, much of the year was around getting a competitive team on the field while also breaking in several players who would serve as the bedrock of the team in future campaigns.
Several were thrust right into action from opening day onward and those players rewarded that faith with strong seasons, but Nathan Sutherlin offered a bit more than others.
The freshman led the Tiger Cubs on offense with 37 hits, 31 RBIs, eight doubles and two home runs, giving the lineup a power bat for its offense to work around while adding a pair of wins on the mound with a 2.04 ERA across 24 innings.
Sutherlin’s efforts for Greencastle, who managed to reclaim the Putnam County Bucket late in the year, earned him the title of Putnam County Baseball Player of the Year.
Sutherlin led the Tiger Cubs in slugging (.616), and OPS (1.106) while adding eight stolen bases and fielded at a .882 rate with 20 putouts and 40 assists in 68 chances.
On the mound, Sutherlin allowed 25 hits in his 24 innings, giving up 13 runs (seven earned) with 11 walks and 32 strikeouts.
Sutherlin, who played summer ball with Indy Expos prior to the 2023 season and joined the ranks of Indy Nitro this summer, said much of his work prior to coming into the high school ranks focused on his arm and not his bat.
“While I play mostly middle infield, I worked mainly on pitching during the summer,” Sutherlin said. “(Greencastle head coach Ben) Wells wanted me to be a No. 2 or 3 pitcher, so I needed to add some mph to pitches.”
Getting into the rotation was hardly the only battle Sutherlin faced before the season began.
Several infield spots were open for competition and the young Tiger Cubs each looked to carve out their own spot in in the lineup with Sutherlin eventually securing short stop for himself.
“It was definitely a tough battle,” Sutherlin said about breaking into the lineup. “Between myself, Sam (Gooch) and Trevin (Long) it was a battle to see who would start at shortstop.
“I had to earn that spot.”
All three players would start on opening day against Western Boone, as would Ashton Dayhuff, while Connor Sullivan would later get into the game, meaning the field was majority freshman by game’s end.
“Sam, Trevin and Ashton, we’re all used to playing together,” Sutherlin said about the lineup skewing younger. “I know how they play and they knew how I play.
“Playing alongside them was fun and a lot better than not playing with them.”
With only two seniors in the starting lineup and few upperclassmen on the team, the freshman group was soon tasked with additional roles in the lineup which Sutherlin said could have been a heavy burden had a structure not been in place to help mitigate the pressure.
“I felt like I had to be a leader but also didn’t feel pressure from the others,” Sutherlin said. “Coach Wells helped ease us into things and created a good environment that didn’t add any pressure.
“There were times I felt like if I wasn’t hitting, we wouldn’t win games, but others contributed and made opposing teams pitch to me, which meant a lot.”
While Greencastle picked up a win on opening day, things didn’t go quite so smoothly from there as the team was 2-3 heading into the Putnam County Baseball Tournament.
“The first couple of weeks were kind of jumbled up,” Sutherlin noted. “Ashton getting hurt messed up our positioning a bit but we still felt good going into the county tournament.
“We found a way to come through the changes and the first half of the championship game showed that. We just kind of lost it late on.”
Consistency continued to elude Greencastle for much of the season thereafter, partly down to the positional shuffle and partly due to inexperience on the field according to Sutherlin.
“A lot of guys were in positions they normally didn’t play,” Sutherlin said. “It’s tough to change like that.
“There were also a lot of freshmen playing, sometimes five in the game at a time, and even though it was my second varsity sport of the year, it’s still tough to jump into varsity spots in any sport.”
While wins and loses came in equal measure, a peculiar event kept happening to the Tiger Cubs: extra innings.
Having not had an extra inning game in at least a decade, the Tiger Cubs found themselves in five games that required more than seven innings of play to find a winner.
The first two went 10 innings, both WIC losses as the Tiger Cubs fell to Indian Creek 4-3 and later Sullivan 3-2.
“In those first two games, we had a lead in the extra innings and ended up losing in the 10th,” Sutherlin said. “In the other three games, we said we had to be focused on the last couple of innings as the other teams we played could put runs up on us.
“The focus we had in those last couple of innings helped us win those games.”
The wins in question came in big moments as Greencastle defeated North Putnam 3-2 in eight innings to claim the Putnam County Bucket and later held on to the Bucket in a 10-8 win in eight innings over South Putnam.
In the final extra inning game, the Tiger Cubs would hold on for a 3-2 win over then-A No. 2 Clay City, completing the strongest week of play for the team during the 2023 season.
“The North Putnam win was huge,” Sutherlin said. “The team was focused and the next couple of games were off the charts.
“The Clay City win was a great win. We didn’t expect to do that well but came out on top as we came out, played our game and things worked out great.”
Greencastle opened up sectional play against Southmont, a game in which the Tiger Cubs started out with a 1-0 lead before the Mounties scored the next three runs, taking a 3-1 lead into the sixth.
Sutherlin tripled to plate a run and scored in the next at-bat to tie the game at 3-3, only for Southmont to retake the lead 5-3 in the top of the seventh.
A two-out rally saw a pair of doubles set up Sutherlin for a game-winning hit to send Greencastle into the sectional semifinal.
“It was a great feeling,” Sutherlin said about getting the sectional win. “To hit a game winner in the bottom of the final inning is a rush.
“Everyone went crazy. There’s no better feeling in the world than walking things off.”
Though Greencastle would fall in the sectional semifinal to the Cougars, Sutherlin said both teams played well but the Tiger Cubs were edged out in the end.
“It definitely felt like things could have gone better,” Sutherlin said about the final meeting with North Putnam. “We played well as a team, met the standards we have of ourselves and felt like it was a winnable game.
“Maybe a lack of focus cost us. We hit the ball well but Jaylen (Windmiller) is a good pitcher and they came out on top.
“Before the season, I wanted to win the county and keep things going from there,” Sutherlin added. “We did fall short in county, so our next goal was to win the sectional.
“We still fell short, both times to North Putnam, who was a good team and that rivalry will always be there.”
Greencastle finished the season 13-12 and while Sutherlin said the team wanted a better year, it took a lot for a team in transition to get done what it did.
“We had guys that were in leadership spots maybe they didn’t expect to be in,” Sutherlin pointed out. “I feel personally I could have hit better and lacked a little bit at the end of the year.
“All of my teammates hit well and that made pitchers throw to me early. All of them helped me hit the ball this year.
“On the mound, I didn’t pitch as well as I wanted to and need to gain velocity,” Sutherlin added. “There were also too many routine plays defensively I should have made but didn’t.”
While pointing to some of his flaws on the field, Sutherlin added he was still pleased with most of what happened in the 2023 season and said with another year of work, he anticipated being an even bigger threat for the 2024 season and beyond.
“I am still really happy with my freshman year,” Sutherlin said. “I had two home runs when I didn’t expect to hit any and though I hit a lot of doubles, I didn’t quite get the record for a season, so I have some room to grow as a player.
“I still might have room to grow physically as well, especially when it comes to adding some muscle in order to hit the ball further and get fasted. Everything will get better as I get stronger and fill out.”