SLIPPERY ROCK — Chase Byerly was on the cusp of getting cut by the Butler (Indiana) University baseball team 18 months ago.

Then, a radical change to his delivery yielded a radical change in results.

Now, Byerly is the closer no one wants to face in the ninth inning in the Prospect League.

The Slippery Rock reliever showed again why he has been so good finishing games this season, pitching a scoreless ninth to lead the Sliders to a 3-1 win over DeKalb (Illinois) County at Critchfield Park Wednesday night.

Byerly switched to a sidearm delivery after seeing little success with a more traditional motion.

Butler coach Steve Farley encouraged Byerly to make the change and stuck with him during the rocky transition.

“Honestly, (Farley) gave me a chance to keep playing — I was on the line, I could have been cut if I kept throwing over the top,” said Byerly, who will be a junior at Butler this fall. “I made that switch and I’m grateful.”

So is Slippery Rock manager Andy Chalot, who hand-picked Byerly for his team this summer precisely because he was a sidearm hurler.

Byerly hasn’t disappointed. He has a league-leading 12 saves and a 0.77 ERA in 20 innings this season.

He made sure the Sliders, who scored two runs on a pair of wild pitches in the bottom of the eighth inning to break a 1-1 tie against DeKalb, won the game and remained in first place.

“I love it. He’s the best closer in the league and I think it was an absolute shame he didn’t make the All-Star team,” Chalot said. “He’s just been lights out.”

It wasn’t always that way for Byerly when he made the delivery switch.

He had to adjust to the new movement his pitches gained from the vastly different release point and arm slot.

“It’s kind of funny, during my freshman year in the spring when I switched, I think I hit about six righties in the first eight innings I pitched,” Byerly said. “I didn’t have much control.”

But now he does. Byerly’s pitches run down and in on right-handed hitters and down and away against left-handed swingers.

What results is a lot of ground ball outs.

He ended the game against DeKalb with a routine 1-6-3 double play.

“Submarine ... he just gets so much sink on the ball,” Chalot said. “It’s darn near impossible to get any lift on the ball, so even when he does give up a hit, he can come back and get two outs with one pitch.”

With a dominant closer and performances from the starting pitching like the one turned in by Jeff Barto against the Liners — eight innings, zero walks and six strikeouts — the Sliders, who were buried in the standings during the first half of the season, are now sitting atop the division in the second half with a little more than a week left to play.

“Kids always play better when they are confident and we are a whole lot more confident than we were in the first half,” Chalot said. “It’s always easier to play ahead than it is playing catch-up. We don’t have to look at the standings. All we have to do is go out and win and we’ll stay in first place.”

DeKalb County 000 001 000 — 1 8 1Slippery Rock 000 001 02x — 3 6 1W: Jeff Barto 8IP (6K, 0BB).

L: Tyler Dray 1IP (1K, 0BB).

DeKalb County (9-11): Trenton Moses 3-1B, Steven Scoby 2B, Andy Lennington 2B

Slippery Rock (11-8): Trent Wooldridge 2-1B, Fred Ford 1B SB R, Steve Sulcoski 2B RBI

Today: DeKalb County at Slippery Rock, 7:05