News

Baseball Canada’s national junior team lost 12-2 yesterday in its first exhibition game in preparation for the World Junior AAA Championships, set to begin in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba Sept. 17.

Canada struck first and appeared to be off and running when an RBI single by Shayne Willson (Surrey, B.C.) cashed in Chase Larsson (Vancouver, B.C.), but after being held scoreless in the opening frame, the Cubans erupted for five runs in the second behind three hits, a walk, a hit batsman and a pair of wild pitches.

After capitalizing on Canadian miscues to open up a convincing 5-1 lead, Cuba’s attack was relentless as the home squad scored a solo marker in the third inning followed by three more in the fourth before Pavel Avesada hit a monster two-run homerun in the fifth inning to put Cuba up 11-1.

Canada meanwhile, had difficulty handling four Cuban pitchers who were topping out at over 90 MPH. Brett Lawrie (Langley, B.C.) took advantage of two Cuban errors to come around to score in the top of the sixth inning, but Cuba answered in the bottom half of the inning to round out the scoring.

Canada’s five hits in the game were all singles by Larsson, Willson, Jonathan Waltenbury (Bowmanville, Ont.), Mark Ellis (Maple Ridge, B.C.) and Kyle Gilligan (Toronto, Ont.)

Cuba had 12 runs on 15 hits and 3 errors.

Canada will attempt to even the exhibition series Monday at 1:30 p.m.