Errors giving T-birds trouble

SHORELINE — Quality pitching comes and goes and even the most power-packed batting orders go through slumps.

The one constant for the Shorewood baseball team through such ups and downs has always been stellar defensive play.

That hasn’t been the case this season for the Thunderbirds, who have been bombarded by fielding errors in their first four Wesco 4A South Division series.

“We pride ourselves here on our defense and so far, it’s just not there,” Shorewood coach Wyatt Tonkin said. “We’ve made close to 20 errors in six or seven games. Our pitching staff is just too fragile for that. We can’t keep giving teams four, five or six outs an inning. It just kills us.”

In their first eight league contests the T-birds committed 21 errors, 14 of which came in a particularly disastrous three-game stretch.

“We seem to make a key error every game somewhere to open the floodgates and we can’t recover,” Tonkin said.

The lax defensive effort has tarnished some solid outings by Shorewood’s top two starting pitchers, senior Luke Farden and junior Tony Hamilton.

Going into this week, Farden had issued just three walks and allowed four earned runs. He improved to 3-0 with a complete-game effort in a 2-1 win over Meadowdale last week.

“Coach made a few adjustments in the early part of the year that helped a lot and got my velocity up,” Farden said.

Hamilton emerged as a reliable No. 2 behind Farden, but has received minimal run support.

“Tony and Luke can’t throw the ball any better than they’re doing right now,” Tonkin said. “We’re trying to find a couple more arms to chew up some innings for us. We’re pitching thin for the third game of the week.”

The T-birds (3-5 league, 5-5 overall) split their first three series with Kamiak, Edmonds-Woodway and Meadowdale before getting swept by Jackson.

Home runs from Joey Petosa, Travis Snyder and Curt Nelson keyed a 13-3 Jackson win April 9 and the Timberwolves edged Shorewood 7-5 Tuesday.

Farden, Tommy Guttu and Jeremy Sage all hit solo home runs for the T-birds and Farden was saddled with his first defeat of the season.

At the start of the season, Tonkin figured Shorewood’s main strength would be a robust offense. But the T-birds haven’t put up more than five runs since their season-opening 7-4 win over North Kitsap.

Tonkin has made a few tweaks to the lineup, dropping Seth Setterberg from the leadoff slot to middle of the order and moving Sage up towards the top.

“I feel like we’re up against a dam and if we can get a hit with a couple men on base we’ll punch a hole in it and let some water run through,” Tonkin said. “Right now we’re just struggling.”

Farden has a solution.

“We just need to get one good game where we crush somebody to get things rolling,” he said. “If we can lay the wood to somebody it will get us on the right track.”