Capital City got all they wanted and more in Pasco for their first tournament of the season. Starting Saturday missing 3 players they were tested early...

In a rematch of the end of last season Capital City drew the Spokane Dodgers in the first game of the tournament. Spokane drew first blood going up 1-0 in the first off a walk and a base hit off Sox starter Travis Klampe. Capital came back in the bottom half of the inning with Cyrus Mooney and Ben DeSaulnier scoring runs to put them back on top 2-1. It looked even brighter for the Sox at the end of the 2nd inning; going up 5-1 on singles by Jordan Barchus, Connor Goff, Mooney and DeSaulnier. That is when it turned ugly for Capital City, not being able to throw strikes, and multiple mental and physical mistakes in the field led to Spokane cutting the lead to 5-4 at the end of the 5th, and then overtaking the Sox in the 6th. Spokane went on to get the pool play victory 9-5 over Capital City. The Black Sox gave up 9 walks and 3 hit batters to go along with 2 errors during the game. DeSaulnier picked up the early season loss on the mound, Mooney and Goff led the Sox at the plate with 2 hits each.

In game two of the pool play the Black Sox had their biggest struggle of the season, never getting on track against team Xtreme. They gave up 11 runs over the course of 4 innings, only 5 of them earned. The struggles also continued at the plate for the Black Sox gathering only 4 hits and not scoring until the top of the 5th when Jordan Barchus scored after his single to lead off the inning. The game ended due to the 10 run rule after 4 1/2 innings as the Black Sox dropped to 0-2 in pool play with the 11-1 loss.

Game 3 of Saturday didn't start until 8 P.M. under the lights... having only 9 players for the weekend and playing three games in the day you would think the Sox would struggle in the evening right? Capital City finally came to life against the Northwest Titans; going up 3-1 after the 2nd inning on base hits by Cody Ratliff and Ben DeSaulnier. The Sox fell right back in to their old habits in the 3rd inning though, giving up 6 runs on 5 walks. Daniel Zavala came up with a huge 2 RBI single in the bottom of the third to cut the lead to 6-5 going into the 4th. Capital City finally took the lead back in the 4th going up 7-6 on runs from Connor Goff and Ratliff. Cyrus Mooney came up huge in the 5th for the Sox with an RBI single and then scoring by himself later in the inning. That is all DeSaulnier needed on the mound; pitching 4 2/3 innings in relief, picking up the win and only giving up one hit and one run. The win advanced Capital City to the next round of the tournament.

In the next round Capital City laced it up against the Tri-Cities Vipers. Tri-Cities started out fast against the Sox scoring one run in each of the first three innings; Capital City on the other hand didn't get their first hit until Zach Hammerschmidt blasted a triple to the left field wall scoring Jordan Barchus from first. Capital failed to muster any more runs that inning, going into the 4th down 3-1. Capital City had their chances the next inning but only scored once, Tri-Cities answered by taking advantage of a Sox error to score 2 more and extend the lead to 5-2. Both teams would score one more run in the game to bring the final to 6-3; Trent Hardin pitched brilliantly but came up with the loss, going 5 innings and giving up only 2 earned runs. Hammerschmidt had Capital's only hit of the game, something the Black Sox look to improve on over the next two weeks before they head off to Redmond.

Practice will be key over the next few weeks along with regaining players to get a little bit of depth will surely help improvement. It was a great weekend for Capital City to see what they needed to work on early in the season.