One word comes to mind about this past Saturday's road losses to Heppner: frustrating. 14 errors on the day sealed the TigerScots fate against a good Heppner squad with the scores 9-2 and 15-9.
Game one featured a pitcher's dual between Chance Day and Brian Duke until a sore arm forced out the TigerScot hurler. Down 1-0 in the second, Drew Greenwalt turned around a Day fastball for a two run shot to centerfield, lifting the TigerScots to the 2-1 lead. In the fourth, the Mustangs tied the game, then had two outs and bases loaded and hit a fly to the outfield but the ball was lost in the sun allowing 3 runs to score. From there, the TigerScots had 3 more errors and allowed 6 runs (1 EARNED) to score. That was all Day needed to close the door on the TigerScots.
Game 2, followed the same pattern as game one. Heppner was up 2-1 after a Ryan Webb single brought home Dallas Reich in the 3rd inning. Heppner scored 3 runs in the 3rd (NO EARNED) and another 3 in the 4th, (NO EARNED) on 5 TigerScot errors.
In the 5th, the TigerScots got the rally monkey going scoring 8 runs, capped by back to back homeruns by Shane Bond (3 run shot) and Drew Greenwalts second homer of the day. Up 9-8 in the fifth, errors came back to haunt the TigerScots. The Mustangs scored 5 times (NO EARNED RUNS) in the bottom half with NO HITS, 3 more TigerScot errors, 4 walks and all around ugly play.
On the day, Dallas Reich went 4-4 in game 2 and put together a couple great at bats, Ryan Webb went 3-5 with 3 RBI in game 2 with a clutch hits, Shane Bond was 1-3 with a 3 Run shot and hit the ball hard, and Elliot Salter had 3 hits, battled in each at bat and was a good lead off. Drew Greenwalt swung the bat excellent and his hard work paid dividends with 2 home runs (1 absolute blast) and 3 hits.
As a coach, this was an hard game to watch. It is my responsibility to get the boys ready to play and obviously they were not ready. We have been flirting with errors the entire year, Saturday, we compounded those errors with other errors. It is frustrating to battle back and then give away a game. We are a young team, but unforced errors due to lack of focus are not acceptable, no matter how young we are. We have to learn to battle through and quit hanging our heads. Our opponent could care lesss how bad we feel, they want to beat us! We still have A LOT of GREAT things happening in TigerScot baseball and one weekend will not determine our entire season (just like 1 victory will not either) Keep working, have fun, play hard!
Grades:
Pitching C+, B- (a couple walks...too many sore arms...NO MORE Dodgeball tourney during the season :)
Offense: C (too many strikeouts but also a couple EXCELLENT at bats.)
Defense: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (um, that is an F for multiple innings, this is varsity baseball, plays need to be made..errors will happen but not 14.)
Overall: D- (we are a much better team than we showed....)