Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Caps sweep the Seals

Wednesday night marked the end of another forgettable road trip as the Edmonton Capitals defeated the Seals 5-4 to sweep their three-game series. Victoria lost four of their five games on their Alberta trip.

Antony Pluta got his first start since 2006 on Wednesday night and he managed to get through five innings with only giving up four earned runs. The normally wild Pluta only walked one batter and struck out five, but he was knocked around for 11 hits. Aaron Easton gave up one run in an inning of work and he took the loss to drop to 2-2. Chris Bodishbaugh gave Victoria a chance to come back by pitching two scoreless innings to finish the game, but the team couldn't manufacture a come-from-behind victory.

The Seals only managed eight hits on the night. Dale Swinford, Colin Moro and the red-hot Matt Kavanaugh had six of those eight hits. Anthony Pluta was 1-for-2 at the plate to raise his batting average to .750 on the season (he only has four at-bats though).

Chris Van Rossum had an 0-for-4 night to drop his batting average to .208 and his on-base percentage to .244. For a hitter's league like the GBL, those numbers just don't cut it. In fact, the Seals pitchers have almost an identical batting average to Van Rossum's -- they are hitting .205 as a group. Sadly, the Victoria pitchers have walked a lot more frequently than Van Rossum, so they collectively have a better on-base percentage. I don't mean to pick on Chris, but he may find himself on the bench when Sean Smith returns -- possibly as early as Friday night.

Victoria has now lost 14 of its last 15 games. They take to the field at RAP on Friday night to start a seven-game home stand. Hopefully the weather will co-operate and the fans will come out in bigger numbers. But given their record of late...