Big Win for Stingers

Baseball Squad Take Advantage of Weak Bullpen Late in Game

SportsDavid Kaufmann — Published September 14, 2012

The Concordia Stingers baseball team took an early lead and never looked back Wednesday night on their way to an 11-4 thrashing over the McGill Redmen.

“Anytime you score that many runs and hit that many extra base hits you can’t complain,” said Stingers head coach Howard Schwartz.

The Stingers started the game off with two solid innings, scoring two runs each and shutting down the McGill offense at the bottom of the first to take a 4-0 lead.

But by the bottom of the second, the Redmen had other plans for the Stingers’ early celebrations as they took advantage of a couple mistakes made by starting pitcher Brandon Berkovits, scoring three runs off of him.

“The guys are playing hard,” said Redmen head coach Jason Starr. “I think they know they can play better and step it up a level.”

While the Stingers got the winning run in the top of the third with an RBI from Marc Andre Fleury, things started to look gloomy again when Andre Lagarde appeared to have twisted his knee.

“It’s been a lingering injury, so I don’t think I’m going to miss any time,” said Lagarde, unfazed by the injury.

“[Lagarde] was a real hero tonight coming up and staying in the game and that inspired us to play hard,” said Stingers third baseman Mark Nadler, who scored three RBI’s.

Few players made it onto base in the innings that followed. If they did, it was met by solid defense, like when Berkovits caught McGill second baseman Max Tierno trying to steal second base.

The game remained close until the top of the seventh when the McGill defense fell apart. Starr blamed this collapse on some late, unfortunate errors and a weak bullpen.

“The walks are really hurting us early in the season,” he said. “It’s something we know as a pitching staff we have to work on, get ahead in the count, and we can’t give guys free bases.”

The Stingers took this to its full advantage, scoring three double base hits and six runs to put any thoughts of a Redmen comeback to rest.

Concordia will try to make it two in a row when they entertain the John Abbott Islanders Friday evening. Game time is set for 7:30p.m. at Trudeau Park in Côte Saint-Luc.