The offence ran dry and the defence was nearly non-existent for the Parkland Expos midget 鈥楢AA鈥� baseball team Tuesday, May 12, as they fell to the visiting Regina Expos at Melville鈥檚 Pirie Field by a score of 10-3.
Regina jumped ahead early in the game, taking advantage of a pair of Parkland errors to push two runs across the plate in the top half of the first inning.
The hometown Parkland Expos responded with a run of their own in their half of the first inning thanks to the Rathgeber twins as first Cole reached base with a single before being cashed in by brother Kyle who belted a triple to left field to cut the Regina lead in half at 2-1.
Parkland starting pitcher Tyson Black did his job in the second inning, retiring Dawson Wagner-Duff, Morgan Bogdan and Christian Crossman with back-to-back-to-back strikeouts before the Parkland Expos took the lead in their half of the inning, stringing together three hits and an error to score a pair of runs for a 3-2 Parkland lead after two innings.
Unfortunately the 3-2 lead was as close as Parkland would get to victory on Tuesday, May 12, as the visiting Regina Expos would retake the lead in the third inning with two runs before putting the game away in the fourth with a five run outburst.
Regina added one more for good measure in the fifth inning while relief pitcher Spencer Davis in to ensure the win striking out six batters in two innings as the Parkland Expos lost 10-3 to even their record at 3-3 thru six games in the SPBL鈥檚 鈥楢AA鈥� division.
Tyson Blacks shouldered the loss for the Parkland Expos surrendering nine runs, just five earned, on eight hits and a walk while striking out three over 3.2 innings of work.
Alex Galloway picked up the win for Regina tossing five strong innings and striking out eight while giving up just three runs (one earned) on six hits before giving way to Davis who retired six of the seven batters he faced.
Following the game Parkland Expos co-coach Tony Black told Yorkton This Week that Regina wasn鈥檛 hitting the ball hard in the game, but that they were placing it well and taking advantage of some less-than-respectable defence. 鈥淭hey were chipping away. They weren鈥檛 hitting anything solid but they were putting it in the holes and putting it right into that spot where the kids couldn鈥檛 get to it,鈥� said Black. 鈥淭hey did a good job of putting the bat out there, making contact and placing their hits and making us pay when we made errors and that鈥檚 what took the game from us today.鈥�
Cole Rathgeber proved to be the offensive highlight on the night as he raised his batting average to .609 over six games with a 3-for-4 performance at the plate in the loss.
In fact coach Black doesn鈥檛 blame the offence at all for the 10-3 loss. Instead the blame, he believes, falls squaring on the shoulders of the defence which committed a season-high six errors in the loss. 鈥淲e made six errors in the game and that definitely doesn鈥檛 help us,鈥� offered Black. 鈥淪ure overall the kids鈥� offensive game is still good so we鈥檝e got no complaints there offensively, but defensively we need work.鈥�
Next action
The Parkland Expos 鈥楢AA鈥� team were in Saskatoon this past weekend for the annual SPBL Saskatchewan Selects tournament, however as of yet full results are unavailable. The next action for the 鈥楢AA鈥� Expos will be tonight (Wednesday) in Regina against the Regina Athletics.
The next home game for the 鈥楢AA鈥� Expos will be this Saturday when they welcome the Muenster Red Sox to Yorkton鈥檚 Jubilee Park for a pair of day games. Game One is scheduled to start at 2:00p.m. with Game Two to begin 15 minutes after the end of the first game.
The next action for the Parkland Expos 鈥楢A鈥� team will also be Saturday, May 23, when they host the Assiniboia Aces at Melville鈥檚 Pirie Field for a doubleheader. Game One goes at 1:00p.m. with Game Two beginning shortly after the end of Game One.
