MONMOUTH — Nate Gagne had a proposal for coach Eric Palleschi before the season.

“I just want to pitch,” Gagne said. “I don’t want to hit. I don’t want to field. I just want to pitch.”

Palleschi heard Gagne’s pitch and raised his own offer.

“I’ll try to make it so you can pitch every game,” Palleschi said. “You may not be able to pitch seven innings. You might only be able to go for three and then you’re out.”

Palleschi wasn’t just caving into his burly senior’s demands. He already knew he wanted to get him a lot of work. Even though he had developed a lot of good arms on the Mustangs’ senior-laden squad, the idea of having Gagne serve as a sort of point man appealed to him. And it certainly appealed to Gagne.

“I was psyched,” Gagne said of his reaction when he heard the plan. “It was a relief because I like watching my teammates work and I like having them play behind me, too. It’s a good feeling when you know you’re going to throw something and if they hit it, they’re going to be behind you.”

Gagne started 11 of the Mustangs’ 16 games and was a key to their 15-1 season and No. 1 seed in the Class C West playoffs, which begin with preliminary action Tuesday. Monmouth hosts the winner of the Maranacook/Carrabec prelim in the quarterfinals on Thursday.

Gagne’s assignment wasn’t quite as arduous as it would seem on paper. He threw a moderate amount of innings, 34.

High school rules require a pitcher who throws four innings or more to rest three days before he can pitch again. So for many of his starts, that meant two innings here, three innings there.

Since their potent lineup often produced early leads, the Mustangs could afford to take him out and give some of their other pitchers work. But when it was a big game, or Gagne was dealing (and a few times, both), he didn’t have to talk his coach out of giving him the hook.

“Nate’s been very unselfish,” Palleschi said. “It’s kind of a joke we’ve had. Every inning, I’ve asked ‘Can you give me one more?’ And there’s been a couple of games where he’s come off the mound and it’s been, ‘Coach, I’m done. I don’t have anything.’ There have also been a couple of games where he’s been, ‘Don’t even think about it. Don’t even ask. Don’t even bother looking at me. I’m going.'”

Two such cases were his start against Hall-Dale, when he came within one out of a perfect game, and his dominating outing when he fanned 12 in 5 1/3 innings in a win over two-time defending state champion Dirigo.

Gagne, who throws in the low-to-mid-80s, chalks his strong season up to improved mechanics. He’s struck out a little over three batters for every walks (46-15).

He said he feels stronger and more fit than he did at the beginning of the season. Other than the occasional sore arm the day after a start, he feels no physical side-affects. That’s because his coaches knew for the plan to work, they couldn’t just make sure not to overwork him on game days.

“The biggest thing we talked about before the season was we’ve got to have a routine. What’s the routine going to be between starts?” Palleschi said.

Since Gagne doesn’t play another position or hit, he’s focused on workouts and drills between starts. While his teammates are taking fielding practice, for example, he might be running or long-tossing.

If anything, Gagne craves the routine.

“I’ve always loved pitching since Little League. I never fell in love with any other position,” he said. “I wasn’t, like, a huge hitter. Whenever I was on the mound, I felt right. I wanted to chuck the ball all the time.”

The way Gagne chucks the ball, with a three-quarter delivery, is part of the reason he’s been so effective.

“It is tough to hit because you don’t see it. You don’t see many guys that throw that way, especially that hard,” Palleschi said.

Starting in Little League, coaches tried to change his arm slot to make him more over-the-top, but Gagne never felt comfortable.

“When Nate came in his freshman year, his ball was over the place,” Palleschi said. “People kept saying, ‘You’ve got to correct the arm.’ It wasn’t the arm, it was the head. Because his arm would lay down,his head would lay down with it. Once he got the head straight and stays tall, it doesn’t matter where he throws from.”

As well as they’ve executed it during the regular season, the Mustangs developed their pitching plan with the playoffs in mind. Gagne still expects to lead the charge into the post-season, but doesn’t expect the pressure to change anything. If he doesn’t have his best stuff, he’s confident the Mustangs’ potent offense and plethora of arms, including MVC Player of the  Year Kyle Fletcher, can pick up the slack.

“It’s a totally different season,” Gagne said. “Everyone’s going to come out and play tougher than they did in the regular season, so we’ll just have to play 10 times harder than we did during the regular season.”