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Thursday 29 August – After losing a tight 3-1 game to BC Contois from France this morning at the European Men’s Super Cup in Nettuno, Italy, the Meteors Men’s Fastpitch .jpg)
Team know that one more loss will bring their tournament to an end.
This morning’s game was the first in the ESF II Cup, the second phase of the tournament for teams that finished in the bottom half of the first-round pools, and it’s being played on a double-elimination basis.
So the Meteors will have their backs to the wall at 9.00 am Italian time on Friday when they play MRKI Medvedi from Croatia. The loser of that game will be out of the tournament, while the winner will stay alive and play again at 1.00 pm tomorrow afternoon, requiring another win to play on Saturday.
Tough pitcher
This morning, the Meteors came up against a tough opponent in BC Contois’s Argentinian starter Mariano Peletay. He threw all seven innings and gave the Meteors just a single run on one hit and three walks while striking out eight.
Josh Peat started for the Meteors and matched Peletay for the first four innings, allowing just one run to the French team in the bottom of the third inning. But the French took the lead with another run in the bottom of the fifth, at which point Karl Hjelm came in to pitch, and BC Contois added an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth.
Both Josh and Karl pitched well and the Meteors’ defense played errorless softball behind them. But though the offense got bat on ball and certainly weren’t blown away, scoring chances were few and far between.
Few chances
Neither team mounted much of a threat until the bottom of the third inning when BC Contois took the lead. With one out, second baseman Rony Papa lashed a triple to left field – the first hit of the game for either team – and scored on an infield out.
The Meteors came back immediately to tie the score in the top of the fourth inning, thanks in part to the one hit they had in the game. Josh Peat led off the inning with a walk, stole second and, with one out, moved to third when Damon Brown punched a single through the left side of the infield. Josh then scored on a sacrifice fly to centre field by Amit Aswani.
The run that put the French team ahead and decided the game came in the bottom of the fifth inning. A single to centre field by Mikael Lavarenne and a bunt single by Rony Papa put runners on first and second with no one out, and both moved up on a wild pitch. Lavarenne then scored on a groundout, though the Meteors might have had a chance to cut off the run at home rather than take the out at first.
At that point, Karl Hjelm relieved Josh Peat and got out of the inning without further damage.
Adding on
The Meteors went down in order in the top of the sixth inning and the French tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the frame with three straight hits – two singles and a double – after two were out.
Though Ieuan Gale reached first on an error with two out in the top of the seventh inning, Mariano Peletay got Neil Davies on a called third strike to end the game.
Afterwards, Head Coach Robbie Robison said, “It was frustrating. We had a couple of opportunities but couldn’t take them, and though we didn’t make any physical errors, a couple of mental errors cost us runs. It was unfortunate, but we’re still learning, and for us, that’s what this tournament is about.”
Full scores and standings from the first-round pools and from the Super Cup and ESF Cup playoff rounds can be found on: http://competition.europeansoftball.org/2019/nettuno/schedule.php.