Unhittable: Dominant season earns Riverside's Christian Lucarelli Times' Player of the Year

NORTH SEWICKLEY TWP. – He’s only 16 years old, but Christian Lucarelli already has positioned himself among the most accomplished pitchers to ever throw for Riverside High School’s baseball program.

That’s quite a statement considering the Panthers have won six WPIAL championships and five state titles over the years, thanks largely to its perpetual cast of top-notch hurlers.

“We learned a long time ago that if you don’t have pitching, you aren’t going anywhere,” said Dan Oliastro, Riverside’s veteran coach.

The Panthers went far this past season, winning all 25 games they played including victories in the WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A championship games.

Throughout that historic season – Riverside became the first team in WPIAL history to win a state title with a perfect record – the Panthers pitching staff excelled.

There were two seven-game winners in senior Ronnie Harper and sophomore Hunter Garvin. There was also Lucarelli, the Beaver County Times’ 2023 Baseball Player of the Year.

A sophomore, Lucarelli compiled an 8-0 record.

A 6-foot-2, 190-pound right-hander, he was at his best when it mattered most.

He was the winning pitcher in the PIAA quarterfinals and semifinals.

He was the winning pitcher in the state championship game, a 4-0 win over Camp Hill. In that game, he pitched 6 2/3 scoreless innings, allowed just two hits and struck out nine.

In the 17 innings he pitched in the state tournament, he allowed just one earned run on seven hits with 26 strikeouts.

“I just try to go out there and throw the best game I can for the team,” Lucarelli said.

“He was just unbelievable,” Oliastro said of Lucarelli’s performance this season.

Lucarelli, who’s already made a verbal commitment to play major-college baseball at Duke, basically has a three-pitch repertoire.

Even though he’s only 16, he throws an overpowering four-seam fastball. He consistently throws it in the high 80s and low 90s, and was timed as high as 96 miles per hour during a playoff game win over Freeport.

He also throws a nasty slider.

His fastball and slider are so effective that he rarely uses his knuckle curveball.

“He started out last year pretty much as a thrower,” Oliastro said. “Now he’s getting his off-speed pitches over, especially his slider. He’s turning into a really good pitcher.

“If you saw our game (in the state final), his off-speed pitches make him almost unhittable. When you mix that with his 90-plus fastball, there aren’t going to be many kids at the high school level who are going to hit the ball.”

Last year as a freshman on a 17-7 team that reached the WPIAL semifinals and state quarterfinals, Lucarelli flashed his potential. He compiled a 4-3 record, and ranked second on the team in wins behind Harper, who was 7-2. In 36⅔ innings of pitching, Lucarelli struck out 59, walked 27 and had a 2.86 earned run average. Opposing batters hit .230 against him.

This year, Lucarelli blossomed into one of the WPIAL’s best pitchers and arguably the best in the state in the 3A classification. He pitched 60⅔ innings, struck out 119 – that’s almost two Ks per inning – walked 39 and allowed just 10 runs. With a 1.15 ERA, opponents only batted .105 against him.

Oliastro said it best by saying that Lucarelli was “almost unhittable.”

“Last year, I struggled with command.” Lucarelli said. “I was throwing hard, 88, 90, but it was like I could barely throw a strike. Some games, I would have it. Some games I wouldn’t be able to do anything. So, in the off-season, I trained to get stronger and throw harder. I developed more off-speed pitches. I worked on my mechanics. This year, I had better feel for all my pitches … just more fluid and smooth. I felt much better this year than last year. So, all the time I put into it, all the hard work and training, it paid off.”

Beside playing high school baseball for Riverside, Lucarelli also plays for the Beaver Valley Baseball, a travel program for many of the top young players in western Pennsylvania. BVB players get to display their talents in several showcases and tournaments each summer, including tourneys this summer in Atlanta, Ga., and Fort Myers, Fla.

It was during his Beaver Valley Baseball travels last year when Lucarelli first started to pique the interest of college coaches, including Duke head coach Chris Pollard and assistant coach/recruiting coordinator Ty Blankmeyer.

In April after Lucarelli made a visit to Duke, which plays home games on two different fields:  Jack Coombs Field, the Blue Devils’ on-campus venue; and Durham Bulls Athletic Park, located in downtown Durham, N.C. and home of the Durham Bulls, the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays.

“I got to see a game there,” Lucarelli said. “I just loved everything down there. They made me an offer."

And it didn’t take long for Lucarelli, who has a 4.0 grade point average in the classroom, to accept that offer.

Beside his Beaver Valley Baseball schedule this summer, Lucarelli will also be playing in San Diego on August 2-5 in the prestigious Area Code Baseball Underclass Games. The Area Code Baseball Underclass Games feature the top 175 underclassmen from across the nation who’ll be divided into seven different teams.

Tryouts for the Area Code Games are held at 26 sites across the country. Lucarelli attended a tryout hosted by the New York Yankees in Wappingers Falls, NY on June 21. Eight Major League scouts watched that tryout in which Lucarelli performed well enough to advance.

The Area Code Games will be played at the University of San Diego. Scouts from all 30 major league teams as well as several NCAA major-college coaches will be in attendance.

Lucarelli is one of three Pennsylvania players who’ll be on the 25-man roster of the Yankees’ underclass team. The others are Cathedral Prep’s Andrew Costello, a Wake Forest recruit, and Hershey’s Danny Nelson, a Clemson recruit.

Among the alumni who’ve played in the Area Code Games over the years are major-league pitchers Gerritt Cole (Yankees) and Clayton Kershaw (Los Angeles Dodgers) as well as MLB sluggers Bryce Harper (Philadelphia Phillies) and Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels).

“He’s been on the map since last year and maybe even before that,” Oliastro said of Lucarelli.

“He’s a very mature kid. He works at his trade. He has a regiment he follows and he does it religiously. He’s got goals in mind. He can go far. He really could. He has the mentality to handle all that lies ahead of him.”

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Unhittable: Dominant season earns Riverside's Christian Lucarelli Times' Player of the Year