The Kelowna Falcons won their first baseball game of the 2013 West Coast League season in nine tries with a 13-6 victory over the Victoria HarbourCats.
Yet, the fact remains the HarbourCats sport a 7-2 record on the young season.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill from a far more serious occasion, never have so many owed so much to so few.
Those few in this instance are the HarbourCats pitchers, numbering on average only five or six in the lineup for the first nine games of the season.
鈥淥ur starting pitchers are getting deep into games, into the seventh and eighth innings, and that鈥檚 carried us,鈥� said Victoria co-coach Bob Miller, by phone from Kelowna, before Monday鈥檚 setback.
If Victoria鈥檚 starters _hadn鈥檛 gone so deep, the HarbourCats would have been in deep in another way, and not a good one. The bullpen pickings have been slim in terms of quantity, although certainly not quality.
But help is on the way with four new pitchers having completed their U.S. collegiate NCAA commitments and exams expected to join the HarbourCats during a three-game set beginning tonight in Bellingham against the Bells (6-3).
Called up to provide pitching aid Monday for the HarboutCats was Danny Moore of Victoria 鈥� a six-foot-two hurler for Thompson Rivers University Wolfpack 鈥� who got the start as Victoria concluded its three-game set in Kelowna. But disaster struck for Moore in the bottom of the fourth inning when the Falcons touched him for seven runs.
鈥淲e鈥檒l add some pitchers this week to give us some depth,鈥� said Victoria manager Dennis Rogers, following Monday鈥檚 loss.
It was, however, a more familiar early-season outcome Sunday. Getting the job done in a 9-1 HarbourCats victory over the Falcons was Victoria product Connor Russell of the Vancouver Island University Mariners. Russell started on the mound Sunday and went 72脷3 innings, allowing eight hits but just one run with seven strikeouts and five walks despite getting into some jams early.
