On fire … Sunshine’s Stuart Clayton pitched well on Sunday in round one of the Summer League. 54184
MISSED opportunities were costly for Division Two baseball side Sunshine in the summer league season-opener on Saturday.
Williamstown defeated Sunshine (which was demoted from Division One at the end of last season) 6-2 in a competitive game.
Sunshine head coach Shaun Moore said his side just didn’t convert its good hits.
“We struck the ball pretty well, hitting-wise the boys were exceptional, we just couldn’t put it on the scoreboard,” he said.
“Stuart Clayton did the job for us on the mound.
“We just couldn’t back him up defensively. We made a few errors in the field.”
Moore listed Clayton, infielder Chad Galloway, outfielder Pat Lovelock and Shannon Hornstra as Sunshine’s better players.
He said his side needed to show a bit more fight when trailing.
“We had our opportunities, we had a lot of base runners on, we basically had two base runners on in every innings.
“We just couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity of having the boys on base.
“We hit into a couple of double plays, but in saying so Williamstown made good defensive plays to stop that.
“They made a couple of double plays and played pretty well.
“I said to the boys, ‘It’s the first game, take the positives out of it, and we’ll improve again next week’.”
Sunshine will be strengthened by the inclusions of Adam Irons and Rohan Brasher when it takes on St Kilda away on Sunday.
“We’ll have a strong pitcher line-up and hitting line-up will be much stronger,” Moore said.
