By ADEM SARICAOGLU
A WOEFUL defensive showing led to Sunshine suffering a heavy loss to Essendon in Division One baseball on Saturday.
In windy conditions at Sunshine’s Barclay Reserve, the visiting Bombers produced an offensive onslaught to blow the Eagles out of the water, winning 23-6 to leave Sunshine winless three games into the season.
The Eagles’ pitching staff of Chris Prokupek (starting pitcher), Adam Irons, Tom Shaw and Allister Lovelock could do little as Essendon scored eight runs in the seventh inning, effectively killing off the game.
Sunshine director of baseball Marc McKenna believes improved pitching will be the key if the club hopes to reverse its fortunes before getting too deep into the summer stranded in the lower reaches of the table.
“We need our pitching staff to keep the ball down,” McKenna said.
“We have a young team that fields really well, so we obviously need to be able to keep the ball in the field and if our pitching staff keep the ball up like they have been, the opposition’s going to put up a lot of runs against us.
“So if we give ourselves a chance, we keep the ball down and get some ground balls, we’ll start to do a little bit better.”
Despite falling 17 runs short of the mark on Saturday, McKenna remained happy with Sunshine’s offensive output.
After striking out 14 times in each of their opening two games this season, the Eagles managed to keep that number to six against Essendon.
Sunshine also came up with 12 hits for the day, which pleased McKenna.
“Usually, you’d be pretty happy with those numbers because that’ll keep us in most games,” McKenna said.
“But obviously, if we don’t pitch well, we’re going to struggle.”
Despite being winless and finding themselves on the receiving end of such an emphatic belting on Saturday, the Eagles have fared OK so far this season, according to McKenna.
“We’ve played the two teams that played off in the final last year in Essendon and Geelong, and we probably should’ve beaten Geelong last week, so we’re not that far off the mark,” McKenna said.
“Obviously, pitching and defence wins baseball games, so we need to pitch a little better.”
