Volcanoes spit out Frogs
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 10, 2006
EVERETT – The sense of resignation could be seen in the faces and heard in the voices. Even the most hopeful optimist couldn’t ignore the empirical evidence displayed the past three nights.
The Everett AquaSox just aren’t in the same league with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes.
Salem-Keizer blew out Everett for the third straight time, and the Volcanoes completed a series sweep with a 13-4 victory Thursday night at Everett Memorial Stadium.
“We were overmatched for the most part,” Everett manager Dave Myers lamented. “They’re better than we are, and we did nothing to change anyone’s mind. I think this probably shows the vast difference between the top team in the league and us.”
For Everett (24-27), the series was ugly in every sense of the word. Salem-Keizer (34-17) outscored Everett by a combined score of 30-6 in the three games and outplayed the AquaSox in every facet of the game.
Everett came into the series with a glimmer of hope of getting back into the West Division race, had they done any damage against the Volcanoes. Instead the Sox find themselves 10 games behind a team they’ve given no sign they can compete with.
“Salem’s good, they’re the No. 1 team in the league for a reason,” said Everett outfielder Gavin Dickey, who provided one of Everett’s few highlights with a homer. “They swung the bats well all series. We battled and tried to score runs when we could, but they got out to early leads and at this level it’s hard to come back.
“There’s always tomorrow, that’s the great thing about this game.”
Adam Witter homered twice and drove in four runs, Brad Boyer also homered, and Matt Weston was 2-for-3 with three RBI for Salem-Keizer, which turned the series into a statistical mismatch. The Volcanoes out-hit Everett (36-21), out-homered Everett (8-1), issued fewer walks (1-10) and committed fewer errors (0-6).
“We were just coming off a series against Yakmia in which we had breakdowns,” Witter said. “We corrected those in these three games. We came out on fire and never cooled down. It’s a credit to the club to come back like that.”
Dickey and Leury Bonilla each went 2-for-4 for Everett, which will have to settle for playing spoiler the final month of the season rather than fighting for a division title.
“We have to be realistic,” Myers said. “We’re just going to try to win as many games as we can and try not to embarrass ourselves.
“We need to pitch better,” Myers added. “If we give up eight, nine, 13 runs we’re not going to win many. In fact, if we keep giving up eight or nine we might not win another game.”
Speaking of pitching, Everett starter Mike Schilling (3-7) had a brutal outing. He gave up four runs in the top of the first and wasn’t much better after that. In five innings he gave up seven runs on eight hits and a walk. He didn’t strike out a batter.
Meanwhile, Salem-Keizer starter Ben Snyder (3-1) cruised through his five innings. He surrendered two runs on three hits and no walks, striking out five. Steven Calicutt tossed three scoreless innings to close out the game and earn his second save.
Salem-Keizer wasted little time taking control of the game. It all began when Schilling hit the game’s first batter Brian Bocock with an 0-2 pitch. Bobby Felmy crushed an RBI double high off the center-field wall. Weston had an RBI groundout to short and Witter lofted a two-run homer into the homer porch in right, staking the Volcanoes to a 4-0 lead before the AquaSox even came to bat.
The teams traded runs to make it 6-2 after four innings, but the Volcanoes put the game away in the fifth and sixth.
In the fifth, Felmy doubled and later scored on Weston’s single. Boyer blasted a two-run homer over the netting behind the right-center wall in the sixth, giving Salem-Keizer an unassailable 9-2 advantage.
