Despite winning just one of four ball games on the weekend, the White Rock Junior Tritons sit comfortably in a playoff position with a week left in the regular season.
The U16 team is 21-18, good for fourth in the BC Junior Premier Baseball League standings. The top eight clubs in the 12-team league make playoffs, which are to run Aug. 9-12 in Whalley.
Currently, the fifth-seed Victoria Junior Mariners line up as the Tritons’ first-round playoff opponent, though there are enough teams bunched close together in the standings – including the third-place Abbotsford Cardinals and the Vancouver Cannons and Coquitlam Redlegs, fifth and sixth respectively – that the playoff order can easily change by the close of the regular-season schedule.
Last weekend, White Rock split a doubleheader with the Victoria Junior Eagles Saturday at Victoria’s Lambrick Park – losing the first game 14-11 before rebounding with a lopsided 20-1 win in Game 2. On Sunday, the Tritons hosted the Langley Blaze, where they fell 8-7 and 18-2 to the first-place visitors, who have lost just eight of 43 games this season.
In the first game against Victoria, the Tritons fell behind 8-4 by the third inning, before rallying in the last half of the game, scoring two runs in the fourth and fifth and seventh innings, and added a single run in the sixth.
Victoria, however, plated six runs in a big fifth inning to keep the lead intact.
White Rock’s Joey Gladman had three hits – including two doubles – three runs and two runs-batted in, while Dylan Yeager also had a double and two runs scored.
In the second game, the Tritons scored runs in all five innings – including a seven-run fourth frame – until the game was called on account of the mercy rule.
White Rock pounded 11 hits in the win, led by Gladman, who had three and a game-high six RBI, and Daniel Cassino, who had three hits, four runs scored and three RBI. Yeager also went 1-for-2 with two walks, three runs scored and one RBI.
The Tritons were in action Wednesday – after press deadline – playing the Abby Cardinals at Delair Park in Abbotsford. This weekend, White Rock travels to Nanaimo for two games against the Junior Pirates, and Sunday stops in North Vancouver for a doubleheader against the Twins.