Jody Peterson did it once again. Last night Peterson went yard for the third straight game, and he did it in a “grand” way.
With the bases loaded in the bottom of the third inning and the Royals trailing by one run, Peterson took a fastball over the right field fence to promptly unload the bases. Peterson, who has been back batting in the clean up spot with the absence of Matt Stairs collected six RBIs in the 12-9 victory over the Hub City Brewers.
“I’m a bit streaky, and fortunately we play a short season, so if you can get hot and carry it through it usually works pretty good,” said Peterson.
Derek Wilson continued to swing a hot bat for the Royals as he was 3-4 with two doubles, three runs and three RBI. Catcher Mark MacNevin was 3-3 at the plate, while behind it he got banged around a bit.
Having allowed nine runs to the Brewers, the Royals have now allowed five or more runs in three straight games, and five of their eight games so far this season. Manager Mike Lint knows the team can’t get away with allowing that many runs per game.
“That’s been one of our problems all year,” said Lint. “I mean sure we’re playing OK ball and we’re scoring a lot of runs, but we’ve given up, coming into tonight, 40 runs, almost six a game. You go into the playoffs playing ball like that, you’re not going to score 10-12 runs a game. Your pitching staff and defence play like that and give up that many runs every game, you aren’t going to win very many. Its one of those things where our hitting is good, we just need to sharpen up on defence and our pitching has to get better.”
Starter Jay Magee put in a solid effort, going 3.1 while striking out seven, giving up just one run before being relieved by Cody Wiggins with the Royals up 4-1.Wiggins allowed two runs in one inning before being lifted in favour of Joel Arbeau. Arbeau took the game into the bottom of the seventh inning before he too got himself in trouble. Phil Merrill came in to close out the game, but not before the Brewers made a game of it. Trailing 12-3 going into the inning, they put together a six run inning, but it was a matter of too little, too late.
The Royals have a packed schedule next week as they travel to Moncton on Wednesday to play the Hub City Brewers and Thursday to Saint John to play the Alpines before hosting a double header on Sunday against the Charlottetown Islanders. First pitch Sunday will be 1:00 pm.