Green Bay, WI — Another night, another disappointing road loss for the Lakeshore Chinooks.
After last night’s 13-0 shutout loss to the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters, the Chinooks were hoping their most consistent pitcher, Brendan McGuigan, who came into his fourth start of the season sporting a sterling 0.00 ERA in 19 innings of work, could provide them with a spark.
But similar to last night’s start by Austin Jones, McGuigan reached the max cap of 35 pitches in the first inning and could not return to the game.
That first inning was truly a shock. It took just four pitches for McGuigan to retire the first two batters, Jake Munoz and Blaise Maris, on back-to-back groundballs, but then things started to unravel.
Adrian Damia and Tate Soderstrom both singled, Rudy Aguilar walked and Eddy Gonzalez drove two home with a single before McGuigan finally got out of the jam by striking out Jacob Finkbeiner
McGuigan did come close to escaping the jam on pitch 21, a 3-2 slider to Aguilar that could’ve been strike three but was ruled just inches outside the zone. It was a call that McGuigan demanded an explanation for after ball four was issued.
At the end of the day, inches on the outside corner don’t matter. It’s hitting Ethan Ibarra on a 1-2 count and giving up a single to Soderstrom after starting him out 0-2 that cause big innings.
But McGuigan will be the first to admit that his 19 inning scoreless streak was a mixture of skill and plenty of luck. Tonight, luck wasn’t on his side. Balls blooped in, calls didn’t go his way. It’s baseball, sometimes that happens.
After the rough first inning, the Chinooks pitching staff bounced back well.
Kyle Schmitt produced four solid innings of two-run ball in relief to keep things close in the middle innings, and both Joe Gahm and James Wright IV closed things out with three innings and no earned runs between them.
What really cost the Chinooks tonight was a lack of clutch hitting.
In the top of the sixth, Lakeshore pushed across two runs with four straight singles by Jack Dunn, Ronald Sweeney III, Turner Buis and Christian Boulware, and a walk from Dallas Beaver.
But even with no outs and the bases loaded, they could not plate another run.
Andy Shadid, Connor Kimple, and DJ Lee struck out in order—facing the same exact pitcher that was in the process of getting shelled—to quell the Chinooks potential huge, game-breaking inning.
In the seventh, it was more of the same. Takahiro Yamada and Jack Dunn got things started with a walk, but despite having two one and no out, nothing came of it.
Lakeshore plated one in the eighth via a Dunn RBI single and threatened in the ninth thanks to a Buis leadoff walk, the offense can’t help but stare at the sixth and seventh innings and know they missed their real chances to do damage against a Bullfrogs pitching staff that came in ranked dead last in team ERA.
How dead last? Their 5.71 ERA is 0.60 points worse than 19th ranked Waterloo, and 1.20 points worse than 18th ranked Kenosha. Very dead last.
Lakeshore heads back to Mequon tomorrow losers of two straight games and eight of their last 10. After starting the season 7-6, this team has slumped to 9-14 and sits 9 games out of first place and just 3 games out of last place.
Konnor Ash takes the hill looking for revenge against the Bullfrogs. First pitch at Kapco Park is at 6:35.
The Lakeshore Chinooks are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. Now in its 25th anniversary season, the Northwoods League is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 20 teams, drawing significantly more fans, in a friendly ballpark experience, than any league of its kind. A valuable training ground for coaches, umpires and front office staff, more than 190 former Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (WAS), two-time World Series Champions Ben Zobrist (CHC) and Brandon Crawford (SFG) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (BOS), Jordan Zimmermann (DET) and Curtis Granderson (TOR). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League portal. For more information, visit www.lakeshorechinooks.com or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the Chinooks as your favorite team.
