Boll Weevils drop bad one

BY DAVID SHAW
FOR THE SALISBURY POST

Piedmont committed a season-high four errors and surrended 12 hits — all in a rain-shortened, five-inning loss to visiting Delmarva.

“It’s not always the team that plays best that wins,” rookie manager Greg Legg said after the Weevils succumbed, 7-0. “Sometimes the team that plays the worst loses. We played the worst tonight.”

Piedmont (25-11) remained first in the South Atlantic League Northern Division standings. But it bore little resemblence to a first-place team.

“We’re a good team that had a bad game,” said catcher Russ Jacobson. “The season’s 140 games. Sometimes you don’t put it all together.”

Winning pitcher Randy Perez (4-2) did. The 19-year-old lefty relied on a deceptive change-up to shackle the Weevils’ league-leading offense, retiring 15 of the 18 batters he faced.

“He stayed around the plate,” said outfielder Marlon Byrd, one of Piedmont’s six .300 hitters. “That change-up always looked good coming in, then dropped out of the strike zone at the last minute. With a lefty, you’ve got to go to the opposite field. You gotta concentrate and stay back and wait for it. Nobody really adjusted to him.”

The Weevils were limited to three hits and blanked for only the second time this season. Center fielder Shomari Beverly solved Perez twice, blooping a double to right in the third inning and drilling a sharp single up the middle in the fifth. And other than a first-inning base hit by Julio Collazo, the fast-working Californian was an enigma to the Weevils.

“He had a good idea out there,” Piedmont hitting coach Jerry Martin said after Perez struck out four, walked none and recorded nine infield outs. “He knew what he was doing. Our hitters, they just weren’t getting it.”

Neither was losing pitcher Ryan Madson (1-1). After hurling 72 3 shutout innings in his first start on Monday, the tall right-hander was tagged for 11 hits and six earned runs in four-plus innings. He retired only 11 of the 26 Delmarva batters he faced.

“He actually threw the ball well,” said Jacobson. “He didn’t give up any hard hits. He just didn’t catch any breaks and they always seemed to capitalize.”

Delmarva (19-17), winner of five of its past six games, took a first-inning lead when Keith Reed chopped a two-run single over third-baseman Tom Batson’s outstretched glove.

“Ground balls went through and bloops fell in,” said pitching coach Rod Nichols. “They got the key hits at the right time.”

The Shorebirds used four singles to plate two more runs in the top of the second. Then in the fifth they added their last three, aided by two Piedmont errors and a couple of thread-the-needle ground ball singles.

“We’ve been battling back from behind almost every night the last two weeks,” said Legg. “The other team gets ahead of us and we have to play catch-up. You can only do that for so long.”

Byrd, the action-figure who trolls left field for Piedmont, promises a better show when the teams meet again this afternoon at 2:05. “You never know with this team,” he said. “We’ll be fine. Tomorrow we’ll be the Boll Weevils of old.”

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NOTES: Perez lowered his ERA to 1.67, the league’s fourth best. ... Piedmont’s Nate Espy (.360) and Jay Sitzman (.356) came to work as the SAL’s top two hitters. Espy went 0-for-2 and Sitzman didn’t play. ... Madson is the nephew of former American League pitcher Steve Barr. ... A postgame fireworks display was also scratched and rescheduled for Friday.