Both the Portage Phillies and Portage Minor baseball teams are pleased with their respective starts in the South Central Baseball League's midget AA division.
The Phillies rebounded from their first loss of the season on Thursday to get past Portage Minor 10-4 and 9-8 in a doubleheader at Republic of Manitobah Park on Sunday. Tie McFadden knocked home the game-winning RBI in the second game with a single in the bottom of the seventh inning.Head coach Scott Dewis said that it was a nice way to bounce back from a 3-2 loss to Plum Coulee.
"It was a good win," said Dewis. "We got a couple clutch hits that we didn't get last game."
All but three Phillies are in their final season of midget, and Dewis thinks that the experience should help carry the team this year.
"We've got a good age group, and we hope that we compete well in the league playoffs and continue on," said Dewis. "We've always done fairly well at this age level, and hopefully it'll be a good year for us.
"They're playing to their ability, which has been nice."
As a team, Dewis is happy with how the Phillies are firing both offensively and defensively. Dewis said that all pitchers have been solid, while Chad Miller and Robby Moar have been pacing the offence.
Portage Minor, meanwhile, sits at 4-5 after the sweep, but coach Gary Single said that the team has already exceeded expectations.
"It's funny. Being a minor team, we thought that if we won a couple games, we'd actually be doing pretty good," said Single. "We've won a few now and we're actually quite happy.
"Now that we know we can compete, we're hoping to be .500 and maybe make a playoff spot."
Because of the close game in the second matchup of the doubleheader, Single was impressed.
"To force them to use their last bat, I thought we played really well here today," said Single. "The first game maybe got away on us later on in the game, but the second one was a heck of a ballgame."Single said that one of the team's more challenging wins came over Rosenort on June 13, as the team produced one run and held on in a 1-0 win.
"Our pitching played a big strong part in that," said Single.
Though the Phillies managed to tag Minor's pitching on Sunday, Single said that the arms have been the team's centrepiece this season.
"Our pitching is our strong point right now. Maybe it doesn't look that way today, giving up so many runs, but our pitching has kept us in there," said Single.
Offensively, Single said that the team looks to manufacture runs.
"We've been very aggressive," said Single. "We do a lot of hits and runs and trying to steal a lot of bases. We try to play aggressive ball and make things happen."
The Phillies are off until July 4 when they travel to Morden, while Portage Minor will host Altona at 6:45 p.m. that same night.