His daughter is one of Maine’s best high school softball players. Against one of the state’s best teams, though, Eddie Pike wanted her nowhere near the circle.

The Kennebunk softball coach’s team played unbeaten Cheverus on Wednesday in a clash of two contenders in Class A South. Instead of pitching Julia Pike, a senior set to play at NCAA Division I softball at the University of Albany, Eddie Pike went with sophomore Chloe Rousselle.

“We don’t want Cheverus to see her,” Eddie Pike, Kennebunk’s coach of seven seasons, said just a couple hours before the first pitch. “We play them again in two weeks, and looking at our schedule, we’re going to have other games where we’re going to really need her.”

That’s one of many thought processes that softball and baseball coaches throughout Maine are using to manage their ace pitchers. While most coaches want their top arms pitching in the biggest games, there’s often a deeper level of strategy when it comes to deciding when, where and how long their aces throw.

Few pitchers in the state have better numbers than Bucksport softball’s Natalie Simpson. The senior, committed to UMaine-Farmington, has 127 strikeouts in just 67 innings this year, with a 12-0 record and an ERA of 0.10 — but what’s interesting is how coach Rich Rotella has used Simpson this spring.

Take, for instance, Bucksport’s two games against fellow Class C North contender Mattanawcook Academy. In the first matchup between the Golden Bucks and Lynx on May 8, Rotella had Simpson stick to her fastball. Then, in the rematch last Tuesday, he mixed it up by having her focus on spin pitches.

“Our method is, the teams that we face twice, we’re not going to start the same way because any good coach is obviously going to adjust to what we threw,” Rotella said. “You can’t show all of your cards. …  Sure, teams know what pitches Natalie has because they’ve followed her for a couple years, but you don’t want them to be able to telegraph it.”

Whereas Simpson has thrown all but one inning for Bucksport, other teams tend to spread the wealth. Kennebunk usually goes to Melody Rousselle, Chloe’s older sister, when Julia Pike doesn’t pitch, but Melody was unavailable Wednesday. Peyton Cleveland, meanwhile, has been reliable as the Robin to Kyeria Morse’s Batman for Oxford Hills.

Then, there’s Cheverus’ Addison DeRoche, the reigning Gatorade Player of the Year who reached the 300-career strikeout mark Wednesday. DeRoche, a sophomore, could be looking at a long playing career beyond Cheverus, and the Stags boast another strong pitcher in Ashley Conner, so coach John Eisenhart manages DeRoche with great care.

“I don’t like throwing Addison on back-to-back days. We’ve had to — I did one time — (but) I do like to stretch things out for her a little bit,” Eisenhart said. “She’s certainly capable of that, but I do think about her short-term health and her long-term health because she’s got a long career ahead of her. … You definitely want to make sure that she’s healthy when she leaves Cheverus High School.”

Like Kennebunk, Windham also wants to cap Cheverus’ exposure to its ace, Kennedy Kimball, who is another of Maine’s top pitchers. When the teams met May 12, Eagles coach Darcey Gardiner only let Kimball go through the Stags’ batting order once.

That strategy, Oxford Hills coach Cindy Goddard said, can be effective for teams fortunate enough to have multiple quality pitchers. However, Goddard said, if one of her pitchers is throwing well, she isn’t necessarily as concerned about how many looks the opponent gets.

“If a pitcher like Kyeria is grooving, even if we play (a team) three times, she’s still going to be tough,” Goddard said. “For a team like Windham, I definitely get (that strategy) because they’re going to see each other three times. … With what they have, it totally makes sense that they might want to throw someone different.”

IN BASEBALL, DEPTH IS NECESSARY

While softball teams frequently have one pitcher handling the majority of the pitching, baseball teams don’t have that luxury. The sport’s strict pitch-count limits require players to be sidelined for multiple days after long outings, and with multiple games per week, teams with deep rotations have major advantages.

Scarborough has one of the state’s top pitchers in Erik Swenson, a University of Maine commit who hasn’t allowed a hit since his opening start. Swenson has pitched a no-hitter and a perfect game and was part of another perfect game. Coach Wes Ridlon is usually content to let Swenson go as deep in a game as possible, but in a 7-0 win against Cheverus on May 12, Ridlon pulled his ace in the midst of a perfect game so he’d have enough rest to face another opponent later in the week.

“That was a matter of, OK, Erik was on his normal rest, but we knew we wanted to match him up (Saturday) against Gorham,” Ridlon said. “We also didn’t want him to have almost two weeks off since his last start (May 5 against Falmouth), so we felt the Cheverus game was a good game to keep him under 65 as kind of a bullpen session sort of thing between starts.”

It was a wise move. In the game against Gorham last Saturday, Swenson pitched a perfect game.

Ridlon said he’s fortunate that his two other starters, Ryan Shugars and Nate Masters, can also mow down opposing lineups, so he doesn’t have to stress too much about when to pitch Swenson.

Gorham coach Ed Smith, who has Hunter Finck and Husson commit Jack Karlonas behind Vanderbilt-bound Wyatt Nadeau, said his team has a similar luxury.

Smith worries little about lining up Nadeau’s starts for specific matchups, and he doesn’t tell his senior ace to hold back. There’s not much margin for error in Class A South, he said, and he’d rather his Division I-bound star do what he does best than worry about the possibility that a team he might face again figures him out.

“Personally, I feel like having a pitcher hold back may hinder them more than anything because it may become a paralysis-by-analysis sort of thing where you start to overthink it,” Smith said. “Looking too hard at matchups, that’s an easy way to get yourself into trouble, when you try to overthink that stuff and start looking too far ahead. That’s how the teams in this league will sneak up and beat you.”

For other teams, the gap in talent at the top of the rotation is much thinner. Medomak Valley coach Keith Simmons said that while Porter Gahagan is his ace, Donnie Havener isn’t far behind. Cape Elizabeth coach Donald Dutton sees Jameson Bryant and Brady Inman, both set to pitch in college next year, as equals.

Simmons said he plans on doing a little maneuvering so that Gahagan is able to pitch Tuesday against Camden Hills, but he added that, for the most part, he sticks to a regular rotation. Dutton said he doesn’t worry too much about matchups or whether or not a team gets an extra look at one of his two standouts.

“It’s high school baseball; these guys have all been playing for two, three or four years in some cases, so you’re going to see guys,” Dutton said. “You’ve just to roll your guy out there, and you have to trust that his stuff is better than the hitter’s that day.”

Portland Press Herald staff reporter Drew Bonifant contributed to this report.