THUNDER BAY – It was no Fourth of July picnic for the Thunder Bay Border Cats.
After going toe-to-toe with the visiting St. Cloud Rox for four innings, the Border Cats found trouble in the fifth and sixth innings, giving up two and three runs respectively, and had to settle for a split of their two-game series at Port Arthur Stadium, falling 7-1 to even their second-half record at 1-1.
Thunder Bay starter Jack Pineau was rolling along until the fifth, when his control started to falter. Pineau got two outs, the second courtesy of a pick-off play initiated by catcher Tucker Stockman that erased St. Cloud’s Trey King from the basepaths.
But Pineau, a sophomore at Nebraska’s Creighton University, walked Gunnar Hansen, hit Jaixen Frost on a two-strike count and walked Jaylen Ziegler to load the bases for Sawyer Smith, the Rox’s No. 2 hitter on Thursday night.
Smith smacked a single to right that plated a pair of runs, the throw RF Brody Chrisman not in time to nail a diving Frost from safely touching home.
Unforced errors are bound to come back to haunt a team, said Pineau, who took his first loss of 2024, his record dropping to 2-1 on the season.
“It seems like it every time, but that’s just baseball,” Pineau said. “That error too, stuff like that always comes around to bite you. I’ve just got to try to eliminate as many of those (mistakes) as I can and hopefully it doesn’t happen next time.”
Pineau pitched five innings, giving up two runs on three hits and a pair of walks.
It wasn’t the debut reliever Tyler Jordan was looking for either.
One of several newcomers joining the Border Cats for the second half, Jordan gave up a leadoff walk to Carter Hanson, then back-to-back-singles to Will Henson and King to load the bases. Andrew Savage was credited with a sacrifice fly, and a second run came in when centerfielder Ty Hamilton’s throw to the plate sailed wide and into the Thunder Bay dugout area, the remaining runners each awarded an extra base as a result.
Henson scored on the play and Gunnar Hansen delivered King to the plate with another sacrifice fly.
Ty Hamilton drove in the lone Thunder Bay run, plating rookie Sam Stem, who singled to lead off the fifth to make the score 2-1 for the Rox at the time. The Border Cats had runners on first and second with no outs in the inning, but Garrett Sloan lined into a 6-3 double play that killed most of the momentum.
Thunder Bay had runners in scoring position in the second and third, and loaded the bases with two outs in the sxith, only to have Brayden Kuriger fly out to left to end the inning. A one-out walk in the seventh was eliminated when Zane Skanski hit into a inning-ending double play.
“We’ve kind of struggled with that all year, coming up with the big hit with guys in scoring position,” said interim manager Bobby DeNucci, filling in for J.M. Kelly who was out of town on a personal matter.
“We hit into a few double plays today. One time when we didn’t get the bunt down we hit into a double play. We just struggled there today with that.”
Reliever Griffin Catto surrendered two more runs in the eighth. The Cats only allowed nine hits on the night, and walked just four. All nine St. Cloud hits were singles.
Rox starter Kaden Pfeffer had a strong outing, giving up just one run on seven hits and a walk over seven innings. Brandon Jaenke and Brady Joyner each tossed an inning of shutout relief to shut the door on Thunder Bay’s comeback hopes.
The Cats will wrap up their eight-game home stand on Friday and Saturday night against first-half champion La Crosse.
