The White Rock Tritons capped a busy week on the ball diamond with an impressive 17-7 victory over the North Delta Blue Jays Sunday afternoon at South Surrey Athletic Park.
The win – in which Jackson Temple had a home run and two stolen bases, and Brandon Novak drove in three runs – gave the Peninsula-based B.C. Premier Baseball League squad a Sunday split, after losing 2-0 in the first game of the double dip.
The two-game split was a fitting end to an exhausting seven-day stretch for White Rock, who went 3-3 in six games over that span. The team plays again tonight (Tuesday) at home against the Fraser Valley Chiefs.
Sunday’s 17-run explosion did little to get either team’s pitchers’ earned-run averages – Nathan Trueblood went five innings for the Tritons to pick up the win, allowing seven runs in five frames – and each team was sloppy in the the field, with three errors apiece.
Offensively, however, White Rock jumped on North Delta starter Jordan Callow early, scoring once in the second inning, nine times in the third – chasing Callow from the game – and six times in the fourth inning.
The Tritons finished with 15 hits – Tony Tabor, Josh Sigurdson, Novak, Sean McGuire and Talon Van Horn all had two each.
The earlier game was the polar opposite of the second tilt’s offensive outburst – White Rock managed just two hits, and neither team scored until the Jays plated two in the eighth inning.
Josh Larsen was tagged with the loss for the Tritons, despite pitching seven-and-a-third innings, striking out nine while allowing just one earned run.
Douglas Strohan went the distance for North Delta, striking out five through eight innings.
On Saturday, at home against the Nanaimo Pirates, White Rock lost the first game 8-6 before fighting back in the second, winning 5-1.
Tabor led the Tritons’ offence in the second game, going 1-for-4 with a double and two RBI, while Temple – who also had a double – Sigurdson and Spencer Dolphin also knocked in runs.
Adam Shumka was on the hill for the home team, and picked up his fourth win of the season to move to 4-3.
Earlier last week, White Rock dropped a 2-0 decision to the Coquitlam Reds. Like Sunday’s loss to the Blue Jays, the Tritons and Reds were scoreless until extra innings, when the Reds scored a pair in the top of the eighth and the Tritons couldn’t match the output in the bottom of the frame.
Larsen again pitched a gem – going eight innings, allowing five hits while striking out nine – but like his other strong outing against the Jays, was saddled with the loss.
Despite being second in the PBL with 78 strikeouts and sixth in ERA – with a 1.39 mark – Larsen has just a 5-6 won-loss record.
In the Tritons’ other mid-week game last Thursday, they edged the North Shore Twins 8-7 thanks to a three-run tenth inning; the Twins scored answered back with just two in the bottom of the 10th, but it was not enough to earn the win.
Tabor opened the scoring in the tenth, when his single drove in Evan Douglas, and the next batter, Drew Fedyk, cashed in two more with another single.
Alex Webb, pitching 4⅔ innings in relief, picked up the win for White Rock.
White Rock is currently ninth in PBL standings with a 16-21 record; they’re just a half-game back of the eighth-place Abby Cardinals, who have the same number of wins but have played one less game. The Langley Blaze are in top spot with a 30-10 record.
