The North Battleford Beavers came into Tuesday night on a three-game losing streak with only five runs scored during that stretch.
After all was said and done, there was good news and bad news from their game against the defending champion Wilkie Brewers.
The good news for the Beavers is they put up 10 runs.
The bad news?
They lost the game 11-10 and now sit at 5-6-1 with two games remaining in the NSRBL season.
“We’re just not hitting the ball very well, which we had been doing and defence has kind of been struggling,” said Beavers fifth-year player Kyle Palmer of the team’s recent slide. “[Tonight] was just an unlucky break. Both teams played really well, but booted the ball at the same time too, so it was kind of a coin flip game and we came out on the wrong side.”
Last season, North Battleford had pitching issues, which resulted in a team earned run average of 8.57 in the regular season. This season, they’ve more than cut that in half (counting the eight games the league has kept stats for), getting it down to 3.37.
“We added a couple arms this year and got in the gym early so we’ve been pitching for the most part pretty good this season,” Palmer said, who pitched in his fourth game on Tuesday and entered the evening with a sparking 1.24 ERA.
Tuesday, however, was the fifth time in 12 games the Beavers have allowed eight or more runs this season. It sounds like a lot, but the trend for the league has been high scoring in general. The average runs for per game is 6.14 this season.
“There’s definitely the top tier teams and bottom tier teams but this year it seems to have evened out and it’s kind of a wide open league so I think that’s why you’re seeing the high runs this year,” Palmer said.
The Beavers have been caught for the Albers division lead by the Meadow Lake Sox now, as each is one game below .500. Meadow Lake is 6-7 and has just one game left in their season.
Each team plays next on Thursday, with the Sox in the Battlefords to close out their year against the 3-7 Trappers, while the Beavers are on the road to face the Midwest Expos. North Battleford will then close out their season next week against Mervin.
“I think we’ve just got to get a win right now, get back in the win column and I think from there things will take care of themselves,” Palmer added.
nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca
On Twitter: @NathanKanter11
