THUNDER BAY – If Mitch Feller returns to manage the Thunder Bay Border Cats next summer, it’s a good bet he’ll be asking Santa Claus to deliver him a clutch hitter.
For the umpteenth time this season the Cats bats fell silent when the Northwoods League team needed them the most.
Twice OF Jean-Francois Garon hit into rally-killing double plays with runners on first and second and fewer than two outs and it went downhill from there.
Overall as a team Thunder Bay (3-5) left 15 men on base, their lone run coming in the sixth inning on an RBI groundout by Brad Dougherty that plated Noah Strohl from third.
“We just didn’t do the job. We didn’t put very good team at bats together, we got a little selfish and tried to go for individual statistics, basically. And we left a small village on the base paths, plain and simple,” Feller said after a 3-1 defeat at the hands of the expansion Bismarck Larks at Port Arthur Stadium on Thursday night.
“We didn’t execute well enough. We’ll have to come out tomorrow and prove it, but as for tonight, we just weren’t good enough.”
Right-fielder Braden Mosely agreed the 11 hits the Border Cats put up against a trio of Bismarck pitchers should have been enough to win the ballgame.
“It’s just about getting the hits at the right time, just not with the guys in scoring position, which is what it came down to,” said Mosley, who did his part, collecting three hits in five at bats.
Larks starter Andy Lalonde lasted six innings and picked up the win, giving up seven hits while walking four.
The Border Cats had men on base in every inning and stranded three in the sixth and two each in their final three turns at bat.
It wasted a solid outing by the Thunder Bay pitching staff, who combined to allow just six hits in the game, including just one over the final four innings after starter Jake Mielock left after the fifth, having given up three earned runs, while striking out eight and walking three.
Mielock surrendered a run on a wild pitch in the first, after leadoff hitter Connor Perry singled and stole second and third.
He’d give up two more in the fifth, another wild pitch sending runners to second and third, setting up a Cooper Coldiron sacrifice fly that doubled Bismarck’s lead to 2-0. The Larks (4-5) added one more when Wyatt Ulrich’s sinking line drive found the outfield grass.
O’Brien said there’s no use pointing fingers, given that baseball is a team game.
“The hitters are going up there trying to hit, the pitchers are trying to pitch. There are plenty of days when the pitchers will go up there and give up eight, but we’ll score nine and get the win. That’s how baseball works,” said O’Brien, the bullpen workhorse, with 30 innings of relief under his belt.
The Border Cats put two men on base in the eighth with one out, only to have Andy Weber and Colton Thomas fly out to centre on the first pitch they saw from newly installed reliever Jeff Lindgren.
Lindgren then struck out Mosley and Garon to end the game in the ninth, with runners on first and second.
The two teams play Game 2 of their four game set on Friday night.
