THUNDER BAY – Three pitches into Monday night’s game against the Thunder Bay Border Cats the La Crosse Loggers hadn’t made contact with the ball, but already had a 1-0 lead.
It was just that kind of night.
Cats starter Drew Gooch (1-1) hit the recently arrived Braiden Ward with the first pitch of the ballgame, threw a pair of balls then raced around the base paths to score from first when 1B Brady Gulakowski couldn’t handle the pickoff attempt.
Add in three more hit batsmen, seven walks and a wild pitch – not to mention another four errors – and things didn’t bode well for the home team, who went on to drop an 8-1 decision, losing for the 15th time in 17 outings to fall to 6-21 on the season.
Second baseman Nick Conti, who drove in the Border Cats lone run, said it was a tough way to start, but the team has to learn how to put mistakes like that behind them.
“It’s difficult when things like that happen and we obviously haven’t been playing our best, whose seventh RBI of the season knotted the game 1-1 in the first, plating Mark Vierling.
“On a day to day basis we need to come in and keep doing the things we can do to be the best that we can. You can’t think of the games yesterday or even the pitch before. You have to go out and think of throwing strikes that pitch, hitting strikes that pitch. Grinding pitch to pitch is something we definitely need to focus on.”
Loggers third-year manager Brian Lewis said creating havoc on the basepaths is exactly why they brought Ward, who plays for the University of Washington, to Wisconsin.
“He’s supposedly the fastest kid in college baseball and that’s part of what you saw there tonight,” Lewis said.
“A hit by pitch and the things he can make happen with his legs is sometimes incredible.”
The Cats, whose loss was the 600th in franchise history – they’ve got 456 wins – surrendered the lead for good in the fifth, Harrison Freed lifting a sacrifice fly to score Juan Silva with what proved to be the go-ahead run.
Both Gooch and La Crosse starter Lalo Porras departed after five, locked in a 2-1 contest.
It was the Border Cats who found trouble in the sixth, the Loggers batting around against reliever Jack Rasmussen, who loaded the bases with no outs and then fired a wild pitch into the dirt to score leadoff hitter Armani Smith. Shane McGuire singled home a pair, Freed following with an RBI single of his own to make it 6-1.
La Crosse (13-13) would get one more off reliever Calvin Wood in the eighth, adding their final run in the ninth off Omar Maldonado, the scheduled Wednesday morning starter, who walked three batters and has now issued 24 free passes in just 7.2 innings of work.
Loggers reliever Stephen Knapp, on the other hand, was all but perfect, allowing just one hit over the final four innings and was awarded a save, his first of 2018.
The two teams will play the second game of their four-game set on Tuesday at Port Arthur Stadium.
Claw marks: Former Border Cats infielder Kevin Biondic, who hit five home runs for the team in 2017, has signed a minor-league deal with the Boston Red Sox. He played for the University of Maryland this past season … Attendance was 564.
