The Salisbury legion baseball team got off to a nice start to its 2019 regular season, winning two of its first four games and tying another. But last Friday evening the Falcons had a hard time both in the field and at the plate as they fell to North Parkland 2-0 at Salisbury High School.

The Falcons (2-2-1 overall) did not record a hit, made three errors and had a rough outing overall, but it’s not what has epitomized the season thus far. The two-time defending league champions have a different look to them this year and it has been an adjustment.

“This is a very young team this year,” said head coach Scott Heppenheimer. “The last two years that we won the regular season we were stacked with high school players. But this year we only have a couple of guys back from that team. It’s a mixture of Salisbury and Dieruff players. We have very good pitching, we have just been struggling hitting.”

North Parkland used two different pitchers, Collin Duff and Sergio Rodriguez, to throw a combined no-hitter. Will Rodriguez went five and one-third innings for the Falcons and allowed just three hits while striking out five batters. But Salisbury committed three errors, which hurt a solid effort on the mound.

“Will was cruising and then a couple of errors hurt us,” Heppenheimer said. “They didn’t have many hits but we helped them out. There’s not many teams scoring a lot of runs in this league so you want to be sound defensively.”

The Buffaloes scored the game’s first run in the top of the fourth inning. With two outs and runners at first and second, a grounder back to the mound was fielded and thrown to third, but the runner beat the throw and then scored as it got by the third baseman.

The first three North Parkland batters reached base safely in the following inning, and a throwing error with runners on first and second allowed the Buffaloes to score their second run.

“They didn’t have many hits, but the runs they scored proved to be costly,” said Heppenheimer.

Taylor Linn finished off the remaining inning and two-thirds and did not allow a hit or run while striking out one batter.

Salisbury has a busy week with four straight games, beginning this past Monday.