Werribee Giants frittered away chances in the batter’s box and wasted a quality start from young pitcher Wes De Jong to lose 4-3 to the Williamstown Wolves in Baseball Victoria’s summer league division 2 western derby at Presidents Park on Sunday.
“The difference in the game was that we had 14 strikeouts and they only had five,” Giants coach Phil Balzer said.
De Jong produced one of his best outings of the season in unfavourably windy conditions.
He departed the game two outs into the eighth inning with the scores level after a strong 97-pitch battle with Wolves starter Jason Lester.
“It was a challenging game given the conditions,” Balzer said.
“The wind was blowing across the field towards left field. That made it difficult to catch fly balls. They were swirling around.
“Usually in those conditions, pitchers don’t do that well, but both pitchers did an outstanding job to keep the opposition down to only a few runs.”
De Jong is a strong candidate to play US college baseball, according to Balzer.
“He’s been pretty strong in almost every outing this year,” he said. “He’s quite accurate with his pitches; he’s learning from one outing to the next and he doesn’t make many mistakes.”
Matthew Howe was the only Giant who took to the visitors’ pitching. He hit two-from-three and had a walk in a stand-out performance.
The Giants had extra innings in sight when a squeeze bunt was laid down with Andrew Christou at third base, but Jason Christou ploughed into Wolves catcher Jason McDonald a split second late after a jaw-dropping play by pitcher Josh Lee.
“Andrew was charging home and the pitcher dove forward and in one action just flicked it up to the catcher,” Balzer said.
“It was a miraculous play; I’ve never seen it done before.”
The Giants will be hoping to bounce back against St Kilda on the road on Sunday.
