TENINO — Over the first 10 games of the season, Tenino rarely made mistakes when it came to the little things.
Runners weren’t running into outs on the basepaths. Guys in scoring position came around to score. The ball was taken care of defensively.
None of that was the case on Tuesday, though, when the Beavers couldn’t get out of their way in an 11-6 loss to Montesano, their first loss of the season.
“We played very uptight, like we were trying not to lose instead of trying to win,” Tenino coach Ryan Schlesser said. “Monte’s a pretty dang good team. You’re not gonna out-talent them. You’re gonna have to play good, clean baseball, and we just didn’t do that today.”
Early on, the Beavers kept pace with the Bulldogs. Montesano took the lead with two runs in the first two innings, but a pair of RBI singles from Jack Burkhardt and Mason Metcalf tied the game at two in the bottom of the second.
Colton Grubb got the lead right back with a leadoff home run in the top of the third, and the Bulldogs added another later in the frame to go up 4-2.
The Beavers loaded the bases in the bottom half of the inning with just one out, and the first major uncharacteristic mistake came into play.
All three runners were left stranded after a strikeout and a groundout ended the inning.
“When you have the bases loaded against Monte, you need to score,” Schlesser said. “Every time they had a guy in scoring position, they scored. And every time we did, we didn’t.”
In both the fourth and the sixth, the Beavers ran into the final out of the inning on the basepaths, first with a pickoff the end the fourth before a runner was thrown out trying to score on a wild pitch in the sixth.
In that same time frame, Montesano pulled away, pushing its lead from two to seven entering the seventh.
Just six of the 11 runs they scored on the day were charged as earned runs, and Tenino ended up being charged with three errors defensively.
“We just kept snowballing defensively,” Schlesser said. “We just didn’t take care of the baseball. It felt like at the end that we were just holding on for dear life instead of just playing our baseball.”
Tenino began to rally slightly in the bottom of the seventh, when the first five Beavers reached base to open the frame. A few runners came around to score, but the potential tying run never got closer than the on-deck circle.
“Just overall, bad approaches at the plate,” Schlesser said. “It looked better in the seventh. But you can’t do that for six innings, be down eight, and pray and hope you can score eight.”
The Beavers (10-1, 3-1 1A Evergreen) will head to Montesano for a doubleheader to cap their three-game set on Friday, and they’ll be looking for a similar turnaround to what the Bulldogs pulled off last year.
Tenino beat Montesano in Game 1 of their season series last spring, but the Bulldogs won both doubleheader games and went on to win the league title by two games.
“We need to get tough and go take two,” Schlesser said. “League is still right there. Everything’s moving towards May. You want to be playing your best baseball in May. We need to take care of the little things, and today, we didn’t.”
