Plagued by defensive miscues all weekend, the Cambrian Mazda Midget Black Sox dropped a pair of games Saturday at the Coca Cola Classic Baseball Tournament at Sinclair Yards.
In the opening game of the day, the Black Sox surrendered six unearned runs in a 9-1 loss to the Stanwood Ravens. In the second of back-to-back games, Valley East defeated the locals 7-4.
With a 0-3 tournament record, the Black Sox were eliminated from this morning's semi-final contests.
Against Stanwood, the Black Sox wasted a strong pitching performance from Steve Christian by committing five errors, which led to the six unearned runs.
Pitcher Steve Ayotte was roughed up for seven runs in the first two innings against Valley East. Joey Nincil pitched shut out ball the rest of the way but the Black Sox offense couldn't muster enough runs to catch up.
"We just didn't play well defensively all weekend and it was the errors that killed us. We're capable of playing better than this but the good thing is that the players know this," said Black Sox head coach Mike Lebel.
In today's playoff action, Portage Lake will meet Gladwin in one semi-final at 9 a.m. followed by Stanwood and Marquette in the other semi-final at 11:30 a.m. The winners will meet in the championship game at 2 p.m. at Sinclair Yards.