Marchesi stands tall for Bentley

By Julian Benbow



Jarrod Marchesi hung around his older brother, Joe, long enough while Joe was a pitcher at Bentley College to know that Falcons baseball coach Bob DeFelice was, as Joe put it, "definitely his own little genre."
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Jarrod was about 12 or 13 when he first met DeFelice at one of Joe's award banquets, and the first thing DeFelice said to the kid from Peabody was, "Thank God you don't look like your brother."

It was one of those you-had-me-at-hello moments.

"He's a guy where you either love him or you hate him," said the younger Marchesi, who had an idea at that moment that he would probably follow his brother and study business at Bentley while also pitching for DeFelice.

"He's a straight-shooting guy," said Marchesi. "He's going to tell you how it is, and I like that. I don't like people that are going to tell you you throw 95 or whatever. He'll tell you what you throw."

The Everett High product throws a fastball in the low 80s and counters it with a changeup. He is listed at 5 feet 8 inches, but his coach and his brother put him at around 5-6. DeFelice jokes that his "biggest regret is that I'm still not playing, because I'd love to play against him."

But it's how Marchesi uses his stuff that has allowed him to pick up a school-record eight wins this season.

"He hits his spots," DeFelice said. "He moves the ball around. He's living proof that you don't have to have overpowering stuff."

Marchesi made the switch from reliever to starter after wowing DeFelice in the last game of last season. And while DeFelice doubted Marchesi's stamina at first, he can't argue with the numbers the junior right-hander has put up: an 8-2 record with a 2.22 earned-run average and 53 strikeouts.

"He'll break probably every pitching record that's existed here for 40 years, and we've had some pretty good guys here," said DeFelice, the program's only coach since 1968. "So for me, that says a lot."

Going into the weekend, with Bentley fighting to make the Northeast-10 tournament, Jarrod was tied with his brother with 15 career wins.

"Same amount of wins," Joe Marchesi said, "but he's got another year on me. He's definitely the better of the two. . . . He's not a flamethrower by any means, but he's a cocky little kid. He's very confident in his abilities. He battles, he really does. He wants to beat you. He believes that he can beat you and he's going to do whatever he can to do so."

Bentley's record for wins is 21, and next season will be a race between Marchesi and classmate Chris Dupay. But there's a chance the fix is in.

"He'll have a chance," DeFelice said. "I'll make sure he gets there too, because he's Italian and Dupay's French. I'll take care of my fellow countrymen first."