NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks pitcher Nate Ewing walks off the mound in the tenth inning of the Mavericks 6-5 loss to the Regina Red Sox Saturday night.
“We either really lock in and pay attention to the details or we don’t. If we don’t, this isn’t going to turn around. If we do, we have a chance to do something,” said Medicine Hat Mavericks head coach Tyler Jeske after the Mavs 8-7 10th-inning loss Sunday afternoon to the Swift Current 57’s.
The Mavericks lost two of their three games over the weekend, all at Athletic Park, falling Sunday after losing Saturday 6-5 to the Regina Red Sox. Their lone win of the weekend came Friday night, an 8-1 drubbing of Regina to snap a four-game losing streak.
Their record sits at 6-11 and the Mavs are 2-8 in their last 10 games. Jeske says it wouldbe easy to think bounces just aren’t going their way but feels the team needs to create their own luck.
“It comes down to the little things. Baseball is a very individual sport; you have a hitter who’s hitting by themselves and comes about their offensive statistics, then you have a pitcher on the mound who comes about their pitching statistics,” Jeske said. “But at the end of the day, it’s the little things that connect everything. The little things connect the individual element of the game and make it a team sport.”
The Mavericks showed resiliency in their weekend losses with a comeback attempt Saturday night and another near comeback Sunday which was foiled in extra innings. That resiliency however, came in games where the Mavericks had a lead then coughed it up late en route to the loss.
After Saturday’s defeat where the Mavs led 5-3 heading into the eighth inning, Jeske said the Mavericks need to start putting teams out of games and not give them a chance to come back.
“No one hands you a game; every night you have to go out and play 27 outs of winning baseball,” Jeske said. “You get yourself in the driver’s seat, and we just didn’t capitalize early in the game. So now we’re coming down to the end of the game and saying, ‘we have to hold on to a close lead again and we can’t have anything go wrong late in this ballgame, because we didn’t capitalize early in the game.’”
The Mavericks’ offence has flexed its muscles through the first 17 games of the season, knocking in 116 runs, good for third in the Western Canadian Baseball League. On the other side of the ball, Medicine Hat sits last in the league with 109 earned runs against.
After Sunday’s loss, Jeske said he still firmly believes in the team’s ability to get hot and make some noise.
“We’re not out of this thing by any means,” Jeske said. “You look at the Regina team that was here the last two nights and they’d lost five straight. Every team, when you play a 56-game schedule, every team is going to go through a rough patch. Every team is gonna go through a losing streak. You’re going to reach these moments and it comes down to how you respond.”
Mavericks left fielder Austin Cappas shared the belief of his head coach that the team can turn the tides.
“I’m happy to see us bounce back in a tough game like that, but I hope we have that type of energy all throughout the game instead of just at the end,” Cappas said of Sunday’s game. “I have confidence in us that we can turn things around.”
Jeske has been very vocal in his support of the Mavericks’ fans and thanked them for their support since becoming the bench boss in late May. He said they are who he thinks of during this tough stretch.
“At the end of the day when I’m stuck laying in bed at night wondering, ‘what are we going to do or what am I going to say?’ It’s with those people in mind,” Jeske saiad. “The fans who come out and continue to support us because we are going to get this right, we are going to turn over every stone and I’m just very appreciative of their support.”
The Mavs are back in action Wednesday for the first of a two-day, two-game home set against the Moose Jaw Miller Express. First pitch is at 7:05 p.m.
