Black Sox continue to improve with huge win

The Soo Cambrian Mazda Midget Black Sox received a strong pitching performance and capitalized on some mistakes to defeat the EUP Travellers 11-2 on Tuesday night.

A pair of errors led to four of the Black Sox runs in the game while Kyle Sayers had a strong day with a pair of homeruns to drive in four runs.

His first came in the bottom of the first inning with the Sox trailing by a pair of runs. Sayers got the Sox on the board with a three-run homerun.

Just two innings later, Sayers led off the bottom of the third inning with a solo homerun to put the locals up by a 4-2 score.

"I was hitting the ball well tonight," said Sayers following the win. "I was just waiting for the fast ball. It's something that had to come during the at-bat."

"I just wanted (our pitchers) to stop throwing him waist high fastballs when they got behind in the count," EUP manager Greg Rambo joked after the game with reference to his pitchers going after Sayers. "We weren't thinking about putting him on (intentionally)."

After a slow start by Tyler Binkley, the New York Mets prospect pitched a stronger second inning to help lead the Black Sox staff.

"Tyler Binkley needed the work and as you can see in the first his mechanics were a little off," said Mike Lebel. "We let him go an extra inning because he wanted to get the work in. By the third inning he had it down pat. We followed that with young (Jacob) Yukich and then Bergamin and then Grimard. That's nice to sit and watch when you've got a pitching staff like that."

"In baseball, pitching is such a big part of the game," Lebel added. "Most teams, and we've been there, if you have two good pitchers, you're happy. I think right now, we have four quality starters and we're able to bring along kids without putting them in positions where they're going to fail or lose confidence."

"We're really young and they threw four that all four kids threw hard," said Rambo of the Black Sox staff. "For these kids to catch up to that is pretty tough. I've only got two seniors and those two kids are coming from class d programs which are real small high schools. They've never seen one kid in their career throw as hard as these four kids."

After giving up a pair of runs to open the game, the Sox plated 11 unanswered runs en route to the win. Following Sayers' two homeruns, the Sox scored three fourth inning runs thanks to a fielders choice and an error. An error, a walk, and a wild pitch allowed the Black Sox to score four more runs in the fifth inning to cap off the win.

The win improves the Black Sox overall record to 15-8. The Black Sox now prepare for three upcoming tournaments, the first of which is set for this weekend in Escanaba. The Gregg Johnson Memorial tournament officially kicks off on Wednesday with the Black Sox playing their first game on Friday evening.