The Yorkton R. Miller's Midget 'AA' Cardinals played host to the visiting Moose Mountain Mavericks on Tuesday, June 3 in SPBL action in what appeared to be a very even match up.
And early on it was, as the Mavericks jumped out to an early 2-0 lead after one inning only to have the Cardinals score two runs in the bottom of the third to tie the game at two after three innings of play.
From there, however, it was all Moose Mountain as the visitors scored in each of the four remaining innings, tallying one run in the fourth, two in the fifth and one in the sixth before exploding for three runs in the top of the seventh off of reliever Jake Holinaty (2.1 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 3 K).
Caleb Bymak started for the Cards and struggled with control problems all day in the loss, walking a season high five batters through 4.2 innings of work. Bymak also gave up seven hits and surrendered five runs (three earned) while fanning eight Mavericks batters to drop his record to 0-2 with a 4.57 ERA on the season.
But while Bymak seemed to struggle at times on the mound, Cardinals assistant coach Stefan Bymak felt that the performance of his starting pitcher wasn't all that bad. "I thought Caleb had a pretty decent start actually," offered the elder Bymak. "He walked four or five guys which will always kill you, but he didn't give up too many hard hit balls.
"There were a few little bloopers here and there and those are the ones that sting a little but they (Moose Mountain) are a very good hitting team."
Offensively the Cardinals struggled in the game, managing just six singles and one walk over seven innings. Mason Kelley led the sputtering Cardinals offence with a 1-for-3, one RBI afternoon while Tyson Black was also 1-for-3 with an RBI in the loss.
However Stefan Bymak feels that the lack of offensive production in the game is not something that he, or head coach Tony Black, should be worried about. "We've been scoring a lot of runs throughout the course of this year so far," offered Bymak. "I think that the guy they had starting for them did a nice job and the lefty they had closing it out was very strong as well."
Bymak then went on to suggest that the pitching his team faced from Moose Mountain starter Dustin Schill was "probably the best we've faced all year" and that "he shut us down".
Next up
The Yorkton R. Miller's Midget 'AA' Cardinals were in action last night against the very same Moose Mountain Mavericks, however stats were unavailable at press time.
The next action for the Midget Cards will be Saturday, June 14 when they visit the Regina Buffalos before hitting the road again the very next day for a game at Moose Mountain at 1:00pm and a game in Weyburn against the Beavers at 5:00pm.
