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Hit in face with batted ball in fall of 2009, he was excellent in spring of 2010 and has MLB scouts’ attention.
Pittston Area grad Dave Bartuska recovered from a serious injury to put up huge numbers for Dominican College.
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If Division II college baseball gave out a comeback player award, Dave Bartuska would have claimed that accolade in 2010.
The 2007 Pittston Area graduate was out of the sport for a few months after a freak accident in the fall of 2009.
With Bartuska pitching for Lackawanna College during the school’s fall league, a batter slammed a line drive off the aluminum bat and struck Bartuska square in the right side of his face.
He lay on the mound motionless, and just one thing was going through his father’s mind.
“I love baseball, but at that moment in time, I really hated baseball,” Dave Bartuska Sr. said with a crack in his voice as if the incident just happened yesterday.
The younger Bartuska was flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital within minutes and had surgery to repair his fractured eye socket, nose and jaw, which needed 12 screws to repair.
He didn’t let that injury stand in his way of playing the game again and neither did his father, who never mentioned anything about quitting the sport.
In fact, getting hurt may have given him more motivation.
When no other program wanted to take a chance on Bartuska, Dominican College offered him a scholarship for the 2010 season. The Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC) is a wooden bat league, which was a plus for the 21-year-old; he wouldn’t have to worry about aluminum bats.
His debut with the Chargers was excellent as he piled up a 7-2 record with a 2.40 ERA and 91 strikeouts in just 75 innings pitched in 2010, leading the Chargers to the conference championship.
He was so impressive that Major League Baseball scouts started getting more and more interested. To date, Bartuska has filled out paper work for eight different MLB teams and could get drafted as high as the 10th round in June’s Amateur Draft.
His strong 2010 campaign also led him to being rated as one of the top collegiate pitchers in the country in the offseason.
He picked up many accolades including a Small School Preseason All-American nod by Baseball America and a first-team selection to the All-CACC Team.
He also landed on the Tino Martinez Award watch list, which is an award given to the most outstanding player in Division II college baseball. He was on the initial list released in February. The list updates later this month with the semifinalists slated to be announced in May and the finalists and winner announced after the DII Baseball Championships are held May 28 to June 4 in Cary, N.C.
“I’m honored to have those,” Bartuska said. “A lot of people give me attention from seeing what I did last year. I just kept my head in the game and stayed motivated.”
After a slow start to the 2011 season for Dominican, the 6-foot, 175-pounder has got his groove back.
He started the campaign with a 0-2 record and an ERA nearing double digits and attributed the cold start to the cold weather. He has bounced back in a big way and earned CACC Pitcher of the Week honors last week.
Entering the weekend, he has won three straight decisions to move his record to 3-2 and hasn’t given up an earned run in 18 2/3 frames to lower his earned run average to 3.08. He’s averaging over a strikeout per inning with 28 in 26 1/3 innings so far this season and hasn’t allowed a home run. In his last start on Monday, he picked up the victory by going seven innings, fanning nine and giving up only three walks, five hits and an unearned run.
His goals for the season are to improve on last year’s numbers by getting over 100 strikeouts, lower his ERA below 2.00 and increase the velocity on his fastball from 92 to 94 mph.
Even though he has proven that he has recovered from the injury, he still has those random flashback moments. Some of that has to do with bats breaking. Last year, he broke 13 opponents’ bats and four of the barrels landed around the pitcher’s mound.
“It was a big step coming here because it’s wooden bat and although it’s different from a metal bat, the bats break,” he said. “It’s a scary site seeing that coming back at you.”
The scariest scene recently has been for hitters trying to figure out Bartuska’s pitches to get solid hits.