Victoria HarbourCats manager Dennis Rogers talked before the game about consistency.
Indeed his HarbourCats remained consistent, but in all the wrong ways, losing for the eighth time in the last 11 games.
The Walla Walla Sweets (18-11) defeated the HarbourCats (13-12) by an 11-2 count in a West Coast League blowout Tuesday night before 1,187 fans at Royal Athletic Park.
鈥淲e鈥檝e hit a rough patch but we鈥檝e got a lot of games left this summer to pull it all together,鈥� said HarbourCats fielder Chris Lewis, who has had five multi-hit games this season.
鈥淲e鈥檝e got a lot of talent with lots of good arms. We鈥檙e waiting for everything to click,鈥� added the Sacramento State Hornet, who on Tuesday extended his Royal Athletic Park hitting streak to nine games.
Sweets starter Matt Hall (3-1), a lefty from Missouri State, stymied Victoria batters by delivering a five-hitter into six innings. He survived a line drive off his back from Victoria batter Austin Russell in the fifth inning. It wasn鈥檛 until the sixth inning that Victoria was able to dent Hall in another way with a solo homer by Rob Nesovic in the sixth inning followed by an RBI single by Russell.
But by then the damage had already been done as Walla Walla was sitting on an 8-0 lead.
John Skrbec homered for the second consecutive night to give Walla Walla a 2-0 lead in the first inning. Early holes are nothing new for a Victoria team that has has allowed an opening-inning run 13 times in 25 games this season.
Victoria starter Will Ballowe (0-2) then loaded the bases in the third inning with none out because of his own fielding error followed by two walks. That was it for the University of Washington Huskies hurler. Scott Kuzminsky came to the mound in that unenviable position and did not leave unscathed as Walla Walla scored four runs in the third to take a 6-0 lead.
Kuzminsky, out of the University of Hawaii, did well enough in going the rest of the way to save the Victoria bullpen. He was touched for a two-run homer in the ninth inning by Matt Mendenhall, but by that point, it was just a matter of Walla Walla piling on.
John Schuknecht had the most productive on-base night for Victoria with two walks and a double.
The set concludes tonight with Bret Helton (2-0) on the mound for the Sweets and Tanner Kiest (0-1), selected in the 27th round of this year鈥檚 MLB draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers, throwing for the HarbourCats.
Today鈥檚 game concludes a 12-games-in-12-days stretch for Victoria. Thursday and Friday are rest days before catching the ferry Saturday morning for the long trip down I-5 into southern Oregon for a contest that night against the Klamath Falls Gems to start a six-game road trip.
