By Dustin Kent

Published: March 25, 2008

The Sneads Pirates fell to Port St. Joe in a shootout Monday night in Sneads, as the Sharks took a 17-15 win.

Sneads fell to 3-11 after the loss.

Port St. Joe scored 14 runs in the final four innings, getting four runs in the fourth and five in the fifth to blow the game open for a 12-4 lead.

The Pirates fought back with seven in the fifth and two more in the sixth to trim the deficit to 15-13 heading into the final frame.

But the Sharks added two more in the top of the seventh and Sneads wasn’t able to overcome the four-run deficit.

“It was an exciting game,” Sneads coach Mark Guerra said. “We just got relaxed after good innings and gave up runs to them in the next inning. We need to work on keeping our focus and staying in-tuned with the game.”

More to the point, Guerra said his players simply needed to work on not beating themselves as often.

“We’re just walking too many guys and making too many errors,” the coach said. “We’re letting teams stay in games because of our mistakes and that’s killing us.”

The Pirates committed six errors on the game. Sneads pitchers also walked five and beaned four Altha batters.

“It was a combination of a lot of errors, walks and just not throwing a lot of strikes,” Guerra said. “It’s all the little things that count, those are the things we’re not doing. If we can eliminate those mistakes, we could be a pretty good team.”

Sneads got a big-time effort in the loss from Taylor Edge, who went 5-for-5 with two homeruns and five RBI.

Trevin Hall also went 4-for-5 for Sneads.

“I was proud of the effort and the way we fought offensively,” Guerra said of his team. “It was just the walks and hit batsmen that really hurt us too much.”
Sneads next travels to Chipley Wednesday to take on the Tigers before going on the road again Friday against Altha.

“They’re both good teams. Those are going to be tough ballgames,” Guerra said of Chipley and Altha, also noting that his team will be playing in a tournament in Jacksonville April 1-5.
“
It’s a tough stretch of games, so we’ve got to get it together. We’re going to make some changes defensively, so maybe we can get it straightened out.”