PORT CHARLOTTE — When things have gone wrong for the Port Charlotte baseball team this season, there has been one primary culprit the Pirates could blame: Errors.
To be sure, the Pirates have struggled to play clean baseball even when they win, but when they end up on the wrong side of the scoreboard, the trickle of miscues often become an avalanche.
And so it went on Tuesday night against lightly regarded Fort Myers. Port Charlotte committed six errors and a few other mental miscues, allowing Fort Myers to ride the extra outs to a 7-6 victory and seriously damage the Pirates’ postseason hopes.
Port Charlotte entered the District 5A-11 tournament as the top seed and No. 5 overall in Region 5A-3 with a state ranking of No. 76. However, after the loss to the Green Wave — No. 394 — in the district semifinals and a 1-2 record since the most recent rankings, Port Charlotte has now opened a door for a bid thief to knock it out of the region playoff picture.
That potential bid thief will be coming from inside the Pirates’ district — Island Coast (No. 215) will play the Green Wave for an automatic bid in Thursday’s district championship.
The tenor of Tuesday was set just two outs into the game, when a throwing error gave Fort Myers extra at-bats. The Green Wave promptly turned a 1-0 lead into a 3-0 lead before Port Charlotte ever came to the plate.
As they would do twice in the game, Port Charlotte tracked down the visitors. Trailing 3-1, Reed Backstrom led off the third with a walk followed by Landon Carter’s single. Kyle Herrera then skied a pop fly which Fort Myers misplayed into a run-scoring fielder’s choice. A few moments later, Brock Budreau endured a bases-loaded beaning to knot the game at 3-3.
The Pirates gave back those runs in the top of the fourth when an error and a walk put two men on for Madrid Tucker, who dropped a would-be sacrifice bunt that devolved into another error, scoring both baserunners.
Fort Myers pushed the lead to 6-3 by scoring on a wild pitch in the fifth, but Port Charlotte responded again with a three-run sixth inning. Backstrom got the scoring started by racing home on a wild pitch, then with two runners on and two outs, Jaxon Brown-Capo drilled a line drive to right field for a two-run double, knotting the game once more at 6-6.
That set the stage for Port Charlotte’s fatal sixth error. With one on and one out against Budreau, who had come on in relief of Carter an inning earlier, Fort Myers’ Ethan Monrad hit a slow comebacker to the mound. When Budreau wheeled around to get the lead runner at second, he took something off his throw when a fielder was late to cover the bag and the runner was safe.
Michael Magas promptly dribbled a seeing-eye single through the left side of the infield for the go-ahead run. Though Port Charlotte would load the bases with two outs in its last at-bat, the Pirates couldn’t get the tying run home.
Port Charlotte fell to 17-8 with the loss. In their eight defeats, Port Charlotte has committed three errors or more in six of them, twice committing five errors. The six on Tuesday were a season high.
Port Charlotte will now wait for the weekend to find out whether or not it will receive an at-large bid to the regional playoffs.
Most Popular
Comments / 0