Timberwolves off to tough start

MILL CREEK — Tuesday’s baseball game between Jackson and Edmonds-Woodway featured a little bit of everything.

Unfortunately from the Timberwolves’ perspective, none of what transpired in the 8-2 loss to their Western Conference 4A South Division rival was any good.

The Warriors greeted Wolfpack starter Ryan Woods with four consecutive doubles to start the game and pushed across four runs in the first inning.

Two innings later, an unusual sequence of events resulted in a Jackson player’s ejection, while a teammate was pulled from the game after being issued a warning by one of the umpires. Then to top it all off, a spectator also was ejected by the same umpire.

All of these extracurricular activities took place before a single pitch was thrown in the top of the third inning.

The loss was Jackson’s third in a row and left the Timberwolves (1-4 in the league, 3-4 overall), a preseason favorite, near the bottom of the league standings.

Wolfpack coach Kirk Nicholson has been puzzled by his team’s inconsistency to start the season.

“It seems like when we play good defense we don’t put hits together and it seems like whenever we’re hitting we tend to go south on the defensive end,” Nicholson said. “It’s a combination of things. All we can do is keep playing and get back at it.”

Edmonds-Woodway (4-1, 6-1) added a run in the second to take a 5-0 lead before Jackson cut the lead to 5-2 in the third inning.

Wolfpack sophomore Joey Petosa reached first on an error by the shortstop. He then moved to third base on a double by senior Kiel Lillibridge and scored when freshman Kawika Pai hit into a double play. Lillibridge, who advanced to third base, scored on a sacrifice fly by sophomore Curtis Nelson.

The Warriors scored a run in the fourth and added two more in the sixth.

“(We) swung the bats pretty good,” said Edmonds-Woodway coach Joe Webster. “We hit a few balls where they weren’t, which was nice and when we needed to, we hit well with runners in scoring position.”

Warriors pitcher Reed Brown allowed six hits in a complete-game effort. The Edmonds-Woodway senior did not allow more than two hits in an inning except in the bottom of the first.

“I thought we hit the ball just fine,” Nicholson said. “They fielded the ball. The guy threw strikes and we didn’t get any freebies off of him.”

Brown, who walked only one batter, had good control all game.

“He got ahead of most of the hitters and kept the ball down,” Webster said. “It’s nice when you can pitch with a lead because you can be real aggressive … so that helped him out a lot.”

Jackson split its opening series with Everett but then dropped two games to Kamiak last week, including a 2-1 loss in an 11-inning contest that was one of the more memorable games Nicholson has been associated with.

“Defensively we did great,” Nicholson said. “We only struck out one of their batters in the entire 11 innings. We only gave up three hits until the final two innings. That game we hit the ball right at guys and couldn’t clutch up and get something together.”

Kamiak’s Josh Reed singled home the winning run, while teammate Geoff Brown allowed no hits in four inning in relief.

The Knights then defeated Jackson 9-4 the next day to complete a series sweep.

“Kamiak probably lamented last year when we knocked them out of the playoffs,” Nicholson said. “The same thing we did to them, they did to us last week.”

Despite the Timberwovles’ early season troubles, Nicholson wants his team to just keep plugging away.

“Baseball is kind of a funny game in the respect that you can be really bad today and we can come back tomorrow and play a really great game against the same team. We just look forward to the next day and get on with it.”