Three out of four games highlighted by one bad inning and cold bats throughout ensured the Estevan TS&M peewee AAA Tornados were going to suffer a tough couple of days at the diamond this past weekend.
The Tornados (3-10) began their trek through two doubleheaders against the Baseball Regina league leaders with 12-3 and 8-2 road losses to the Regina Buffalos (12-3-1) at Kaplan Field on Saturday. The team followed that with 25-0 and 13-2 defeats to the Swift Current Indians (11-7-2) at Cactus Park’s Dayman Trucking Co. Ltd. Field on Sunday.
Tim Miller, coach of the Tornados, said the guys were a bit sluggish to begin the series with the Indians and made 12 to 14 errors in the field during that first game. He said they did a good job refocusing after the defeat and shored up their play defensively making their throws and catches for the ground ball outs, but a tough fifth inning where Swift Current got eight runs to cross the plate did them in.
“They plain hit the ball that inning,” said Miller, shortly after their second game against the Indians. “They’re a good team. They’re one of the top teams in the province. Other than that we had some base runners that we stranded. We should have scored another four to five runs in that second game. The same thing happened up in Regina last night against the Regina Buffalos. We are stranding a lot of base runners right now, so we need to find a way to ratchet it up more.”
Miller said both of their games against the Buffalos were tight and well-played with the losses coming down to giving up a six-run inning in the first game and a five-run inning in the second. He said the team is getting better in their first year back in the Baseball Regina league and they’re right in there with the opposition, but they have to eliminate the big innings against while also improving their play in the batter’s box to show some gains moving forward.
“We had too many strikeouts last night and today,” he said. “Even when we do make contact it’s not good solid contact, so we’re going to be concentrating on hitting a lot this week and hopefully we have some success this weekend coming up in White Butte against the Broncos.”
