By Jack Loder
There are games that need to be studied. There are games that need to be learned from. This game, however, should be buried. Orleans went to Brewster on Wednesday night and got beat in every facet of the game. The White Caps roughed up Orleans 7-1 in a game that was never close, dropping the Firebirds to 13-17-4 on the summer.
The game was called due to darkness after the top half of the eighth inning, but it may as well been to spare the visiting team. Orleans plated it’s only run in the final half inning of the ballgame.
New starter, same result, at least in the early going. Gray Harrison made his first start on the bump for Orleans on Wednesday, fitting the bill in his first three innings of work. He ran into trouble in the fourth, allowing a solo bomb before surrendering a double on his last pitch of the afternoon. He followed a similar pattern of his predecessors with three stellar shutout innings, but also replicated a troubling trend of struggling when facing the order a second time.
Sam Conte would like to forget this outing as soon as possible. He took over in the fifth, allowing one run. In the sixth inning, he didn’t record an out. A Brewster homer and triple highlighted the big inning, expanding the White Caps lead to 7-0.
Cole Stallings replaced Harrison and immediately surrendered the only runner he inherited, along with another as he gave up a two run bomb to right.
I could paste the body of many other game stories here to summarize Orleans’ performance at the plate tonight. A familiar combination of meager 1-2-3 innings as well as frames featuring squandered scoring opportunities hindered the Birds all night long. Orleans failed to pick up an extra base hit in the contest.
Brewster only picked up nine knocks, but they made theirs count. Two homers, two doubles and a triple paced the Caps in their nine run performance. The shoddy bullpen outing for Orleans
The Birds are back in action on Thursday, as they travel to Chatham for the third time this season to take on the Anglers in an Eastern Division showdown.