By Nathan Kanter

Midget Beavers record another win at Saskatoon tourney

Jun 5, 2017 | 5:00 PM

The midget AA Beavers headed down to Saskatoon this past weekend to play in the 16-team Quinn Stevenson Memorial midget AA Tournament where they finished with one win and three losses.

They opened with a big 11-6 win over the Thunder Braves on Friday night before falling to the Regina White Sox 20-1 and to the Blue Jay Slow Trains 17-3 on Saturday. They lost 10-2 to the Blue Jay Badgers when they crossed over divisions for the playoffs.

“Some more learning opportunities for the guys,” Beavers head coach Bert Benoit said of the weekend on Monday afternoon. “We’ve seen them light up the bats pretty good a couple different games, especially the one on Friday night, and then the one on Sunday we were hitting the ball a bit too but it’s still the weaker part of our game here right now, is getting on base.”

Although cashing in runs is still a work in progress, that was also the biggest positive from the weekend: those moments when the hits were coming.

In Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League play this season through 16 games, the young team only has 47 runs and a 1-15 record.

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“It seems like when we get some base runners and we score a couple runs, the guys get a little excited,” Benoit said. “We recorded our second win on Friday night for the season and the boys were hyped up and I think there’s some key takeaways from that that they can take to the next game.”

Benoit said the lopsided losses aren’t getting to the team.

Instead, they’re still focused on improving all the time.

“I think the kids have got their heart in it,” Benoit said. “They want to play baseball. They’re just up against some kids that have been in midget for two and three years. I don’t think they’re losing moral because of their losses. I think they’re working on the things they can continue to improve on.”

Another good sign is starting pitchers are beginning to go further into games.

Because most of the team is coming out of bantam, getting to a high pitch count was very rare at the start of the season.

Now, that’s beginning to change.

“They’re getting better at getting up there and pitching 80 pitches versus just the 40 and 50 they’re used to,” Benoit said. 

In addition to batting, base running is another area where some lessons were learned this past weekend.

“We were up against some left-handed pitchers and I think there were some things the guys learned on base running as far as how much you can take as a lead-off and those sorts of things,” Benoit said. “And I think just being patient at the plate.”

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @NathanKanter11