NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks centre fielder Braden DeSonia slides into second base ahead of the tag in the Mavericks 7-3 loss to the Lethbridge Bulls Thursday night at Athletic Park.
The Medicine Hat Mavericks can’t get a bounce right now.
The Mavericks dropped their fourth straight game Thursday night, losing 7-3 to the Lethbridge Bulls at Athletic Park.
Pitching coach Rod White said it’s been the little things adding up and it’s become an unstoppable force.
“It’s like a snowball. We have all these hills out here (behind Athletic Park) and I know it snows sometimes, what happens when you take a snowball, the size of a baseball and start rolling it downhill? It starts getting bigger and bigger to the point where it’s an unstoppable object,” White said. “We have to become the unstoppable object at some point in time.”
“The guy’s have to come together and put it all on the line, every single play, work as a team and win it inning by inning and pitch by pitch. That’s what we have to get to. We’re not there yet.”
The Mavericks gave up five runs in the first inning without allowing a hit in part to three walks from starter Keon Burkholder and two errors at first base from Hunter Boylan dealing with sun in his eyes.
“It’s like everything that could go wrong has been going wrong, so hopefully we get all this out of the way now and tomorrow is a new day,” White said.
Burkholder was only able to register one out before Jack Suhai took over on the mound. The Medicine Hat product worked two and two thirds innings with three strikeouts.
After giving up a run in the top half of the third the Mavericks plated their only runs on a two RBI single from Nathan Ade and a RBI single from Austin Cappas.
Isaiah Bartels took over on the mound and there four innings of shutout baseball, only allowing three hits and striking out four Bulls hitters. Jacob Prosch took over in the seventh inning and struck out two while allowing an unearned run. The Mavericks made four errors in Thursday’s loss.
White said part of the message from the coaching staff to the players after the game was to not take what they have for granted.
“What we have here with the Mavericks, what our general managers is providing for us is top of the line, state of the art, compared to most places we’ve been,” White said. “We just have to pull together as players. The coaches, we’re having to get louder, we have to get more angry and if that’s what it takes, that’s what it’s going to be. I hate for it to be that way but at the end of the day, we have to play this game, we have to play it the right way.”
The Mavericks (5-9) have an immediate chance to snap their losing streak Friday when they host the Regina Red Sox at Athletic Park. That game gets underway at 7:05 p.m.
