It was a difficult opening night for the Auckland Tuatara in the Australian Baseball League but reading between the lines, the best is yet to come.
That's the verdict of manager Steve Mintz after the start-up franchise lost the season opener 8-4 to the Perth Heat in the early hours of Saturday morning (NZT).
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Costly errors, specifically in the infield, resulted in needless runs being given away by the Tuatara, with a 3-0 Perth first inning lead proving too much to overcome.
There were positives aplenty though for Mintz – the American MLB veteran delighted with his ace pitcher Josh Collmenter who pitched two outs into the fifth inning, with only one run earned by the Heat offence.
But it was the Tuatara offence that had Mintz smiling despite a four-run loss. With multiple run-scoring opportunities wasted, the 49-year-old believes with a few adjustments, they can overturn that result with two wins on a double-header Saturday in Western Australia.
"You could tell when we first got started that there were some jitters on our part," Mintz told Newshub.
"In baseball, you can win or lose the game in the first inning and that's exactly what happened to us -we allowed them to get in front to our detriment but to our teams' credit we didn't put our heads down and we kept fighting and battling out there.
"We had the go-ahead run at the plate in the seventh inning but it didn't quite work out for us but for the guys to stay in the fight and be in a position to get back in it, as a manager, I was super proud of what they put out last night."
Tuatara hitters grounded into two crucial double plays with no outs in the mid-innings, ultimately proving critical in the Heat repelling the Aucklanders fight back.
More infield errors late in the match stretched the Heat lead to four and the home side claimed a deserved victory.
"We just made a couple of costly errors late that swung the game back to them but we will try and correct those and see if we can get a better result today.
"I'm going to give the guys a mulligan for last night's performance - but as we move forward I will address those mistakes and make sure they don't happen as much.
"We hit the ball well – our bats were great.
"We started to put the ball in play come the second inning but we left quite a few runs out there with a costly double play and some poor base running.
"We should have got more than four so happy with the way we hit - we will get better."
The two sides meet again twice on Saturday and then the series concludes on Sunday with at the fourth and final game of the weekend.
Newshub.
