Sunshine was left shaking its head on Saturday after a disappointing loss to Doncaster in Vic Summer League baseball action.
After a number of strong performances to start the season, a string of mistakes and some sloppy fielding opened the door for Doncaster to grab a comfortable 8-2 win at Barclay Reserve, with Eagles coach Grant Weir clear in his assessment of the day.
“We were poor in every aspect of the game,” Weir said.
“We were short on numbers and talent, but that certainly wasn’t the excuse because it was across the board and everyone contributed to that loss in some way.”
Starting with Tayler Rowe on the mound, Sunshine looked off from the start as Doncaster grabbed an early run to set it on the path to a win.
Rowe battled manfully but mistakes in the field saw Doncaster regularly get players on base and into scoring positions, culminating in a number of multiple run innings in the middle of the match as the game slipped away from the home side.
When it was the Eagles turn to bat they ran the bases poorly, hit the fielders and made poor choices to limit their own scoring potential.
“We had our chances, but we ran ourselves out of a couple of innings with bad base running,” Weir said.
“We made errors, we only had one run going into the ninth innings, and just generally didn’t adjust to a pitcher who was a bit slower than normal and threw a good curve ball. I reckon we ground it out to their short stop 10 times which was frustrating.
“We tried to be too aggressive with our base running when we slipped further behind too, just trying to stretch a single into a double and getting thrown out at second. Stuff like that meant we ended with one out and no one on base instead of having a runner on first. Simple stuff really.”
Jordan Young came on to relief pitch for the final two innings, but by then the game was gone and Sunshine was left to reflect on a bad day.
Despite the loss Weir said they will bounce back quickly, with a mid-week game on Thursday the perfect tonic to get back momentum.
“After you’ve played poorly it’s good having a mid-week game,” he said.
“Just to get straight back into it and brush off the weekend is good for the boys and they’ll be itching to get back out there and rectify the mistakes from this game.”
