Trenton Thunder |

Pitcher Luke Rettig is back with the Thunder. He’s got his best stuff once again

TRENTON — Luke Rettig walked off the field after completing the seventh inning on Thursday night and got a big hug from pitching coach Shawn Chacon.

The left-hander delivered his best performances of the season after he tossed seven shut out frames in what was the latest in a string of terrific outings from a member of the Thunder’s pitching staff.

“It always feels good when you know you did your job and gave your team the best chance to win the game,” Rettig said after the 2-0 victory. “As a starter, that’s all you can do.”

No pitching staff in the MLB Draft League has been better than the Thunder’s in the second half of the season.

After Rettig’s seven scoreless on Thursday, Trenton starters — a rotation that also includes Jackson Balzan, Craig Scherr, Alec Rodriguez and Sonny Fauci — have posted a 2.30 ERA in the 13 games entering play on Friday night.

As a staff, the Thunder have four shutouts and lead the league in ERA (2.45), WHIP (1.10), strikeouts (106) and batting average against (.205).

“There’s a swagger,” Rettig said. “Everyone just goes about their business the way they want to and the way they know works. It’s kind of like not everyone has the same routine, but everyone does their own thing and does it every day and gets their work in to be prepared for whenever they get the call.”

Chacon, an eight-year MLB veteran who was an All-Star in 2003 with Colorado, has been impressed with the staff’s maturity. Most of them spent five seasons in college, and two of them — Rettig and Rodriguez — were on the second half roster last summer.

“It started with the first game of the second half,” Chacon said. “There’s a healthy competition where nobody wants to be the weaker link. Even when they struggle, they are a pretty tight-knit group and they pick each other up. It’s a solid group. I won’t go as far to say special yet, but win that championship, and we can put that label on it.”

You can count Rettig as happy to be back in the capital city after tough first half of the summer in the Pioneer League with the Billings Mustangs. A Delaware native who played collegiately at Lehigh University, Rettig hadn’t pitched outside the Eastern Time Zone until he struggled in the thin mountain air to the tune of an 8.74 ERA in 34 innings.

The comfort of knowing the league and being back on the east coast suits the 6-foot-4 southpaw. He’s 2-1 with a 2.00 ERA and 17 strikeouts against two walks.

On Thursday, he allowed six hits, struck out five and walked one. He landed 66 of his 101 pitches in the zone (65.3%) and because he was able to get outs on his fastball early, it allowed him to use his breaking stuff in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings.

“It was weird (in Montana because) something I noticed is that my mouth would be dry, my hands would be dry. It’s nice to be out here because now my hands are sticky with sweat and rosin again. I can really grip stuff. This is where I grew up playing ball,” said Rettig, who was 4-1 with a 2.47 ERA and started the championship game for the Thunder last summer.

“The Trenton Thunder staff is just awesome. The office people who run this place … we have the best food. You can’t complain about that. It’s just the little things that make this a place where you want to be.”

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Jacob Denner retired all three batters he faced in the tiebreaker and the Thunder swept a two-game set from Frederick following a 3-3 deadlock after nine innings.

Ryan Vogel hit a two-run homer for the first-place Thunder (10-4).