Although they lost two of three road games on the weekend, the Southeast Legacy Twins did finally end a nightmarish 12-game losing streak.
The midget AAA baseball club edged the Regina Mets 3-2 on Saturday, earning their first Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League win since June 5.
On Sunday, though, the Twins retreated back to the loss column with defeats of 10-0 and 7-4 against the Saskatoon Cubs.
"We've lost a lot of close games for sure, and some games we probably deserved to win," said Twins head coach Tom Copeland. "We've been a great tournament team, but we haven't been very good inside our league. Some of that is a function of how good our league is."
The Twins (5-19) continue to occupy the SPBL basement, 1.5 games behind the eighth-place Regina Mets.
Extra innings were required on Saturday, as a balk and a wild pitch combined to bring Garret Fitzpatrick across the plate in the top of the ninth.
The Twins had scored single runs in the second and sixth innings, with the Mets scoring two in the fifth.
Copeland said the game likely would have been over in the seventh if not for an ill-advised play by the Mets. Lead-off man Nolan Benesh hit a triple and tried to stretch it into an inside-the-park home run with no outs, only to be thrown out easily at the plate. On the next at-bat, Chase Nistor singled.
Starter Justin Chuckry went five strong for the Twins, allowing two runs on five hits, three strikeouts and three walks. John Gaab came on in relief and threw four shutout innings.
On the other hand, Copeland said the battery was primarily responsible for the blowout loss against the Cubs Sunday.
"It was a poor pitching performance by all of our pitchers all around in that game. It was nobody but the pitchers and the catchers. They just didn't do their jobs and they knew it, and we pulled them all and put in rookies," said Copeland.
The Cubs ran up a tally of six runs in the second inning to take a 7-0 lead, and the game was over after six innings.
Reliever Mackenzie Lamontagne took the brunt of the damage, working three and a third innings and surrendering eight runs (six earned) on seven hits, four strikeouts and two walks.
Copeland said errors were the main culprit in the second loss on Sunday, especially in the third inning, where he said the Twins should have got out of the frame unharmed, but errors led to three runs being scored by the Cubs.
"A few critical errors, really poor mental errors in the field kind of set us behind," he said. "Just a couple of poor pop-up errors in the second and third innings. They just proceeded to pound us after that."
The Twins scored single runs in the first, fourth, sixth and seventh innings.
Austin Orsted, Nolan Axten and affiliate player Drew Fellner had two hits apiece. Axten jacked a solo home run for 360 feet.
Copeland said that to turn things around, his team needs to improve defensively and be able to put the pitching, hitting and fielding aspects together at the same time.
He added that youth, lack of strength, mental focus, fatigue and an inability to get going early in games are other factors that have plagued his team over the last six weeks.
"This is still a pretty young bunch. This is the most taxing season I've ever been involved in," said Copeland. "We even had to sit some kids this weekend because they're done, they're taxed, they're exhausted."
The Twins will be busy at Lynn Prime Park this week. They were scheduled to host the Regina Athletics in a doubleheader last night.
They host the Regina Wolfpack tonight at 7 p.m. and have home-and-home doubleheaders against Moose Jaw this weekend, playing in Moose Jaw Saturday and Estevan on Sunday. The Sunday games are at 1 and 4 p.m.
