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Twins play a pair of aces in playoff series win

North Shore squad finally fully armed heading into BCPBL championship tournament
Twins
Jack DeCooman fires a pitch for the North Shore Twins Saturday at Parkgate Park. The Twins dispatched the Okanagan Athletics 2-0 in a best-of-three playoff series. photo Paul McGrath, North Shore News

The good news for the North Shore Twins is that they won their opening round playoff series 2-0 against the Okanagan Athletics over the weekend to earn their spot in the B.C. Premier Baseball League championship tournament.

The even better news is that two pitchers who have been wild cards this season, missing for much of the year, turned into the aces the Twins were looking for just as the team is heading into its biggest weekend of the year.

The talent was never in doubt – Jack DeCooman and Sam Shoemaker both were on the roster of the junior national team this year – but the availability was spotty, as DeCooman spent the year shuttling back and forth between the Twins and Team Canada and Shoemaker missed much of the year with injury. But on Saturday at Parkgate Park both pitchers took the mound and threw fire to help hurl the top-ranked Twins past the Athletics.

“It’s nice to have those guys back,” said head coach Brooks McNiven, adding that putting those two aces back in the deck bolsters a pitching staff that was already well-armed with players like Declan Dutton, Tim Walters, Cole Dalla-Zanna and Dan Sereda coming off strong seasons. “We probably have more pitching depth than some of the other teams that are in the tournament and hopefully we can use that to our advantage and hopefully the deeper we get into the tournament, the stronger we’ll get.”

DeCooman set the tone right from the start on Saturday, striking out the side in the first inning of Game 1. He ended up pitching four innings without allowing a single hit, striking out eight while walking three. 

“One thing we talked about going into the games was coming out with a good tone and setting the tone early,” said head coach Brooks McNiven. “Jack played a big part in setting that early tone and striking out the side. … He was dominant.”

The scrappy Athletics did manage to put three unearned runs on DeCooman to tie the game 3-3 thanks to three errors from the Twins in the top of the fourth. The North Shore offence answered back, however, pushing the team to a 6-5 win with Dutton pitching the last three innings to earn a save.

In Game 2 Shoemaker went the distance, giving up just one hit and one earned run while striking out two with three walks as the Twins finished the series with a comfortable 7-1 win.

“He was really good,” McNiven said of Shoemaker. “He hasn’t pitched a lot for us this year coming off injury, but it seems like he’s rounding into form. … That’s a pretty solid outing for his first complete game of the year.”

The offence was strong for the Twins in both games, led by Dion Wintjes who batted .500 over the weekend while collecting three runs batted in. Alec Cumming, Steven Moretto, Noah Or and Marshall Hogan – the team’s one through four hitters ahead of Wintjes – all put up good numbers in the series as well.

The one blemish for the Twins was the defence, which was shaky in Game 1 and at the start of Game 2 before settling down to help Shoemaker finish off his one-hitter.

“In the first game we were a little bit nervous – first playoff game, a little bit more pressure, everybody is kind of on edge,” said McNiven. “We made a couple of poor decisions and got ourselves into trouble in the first game and the start of the second, but we all settled down and things kind of took care of themselves after that. And the boys are really good – scoring a few runs helps to give us a cushion and then there wasn’t so much worry about ‘if I miss this ball it’s going to lead to a loss.’ They were excellent after that.”

The final hurdle for the Twins will come July 20-23 at Coquitlam’s Mundy Park where they will be joined by the Langley Blaze, Parksville Royals, Abbotsford Cardinals and host Coquitlam Reds in the BCPBL championship tournament. The toughest test may well come from the Blaze, who finished a close second behind the Twins in regular season play.

“It’s always a tough challenge when we play them,” said McNiven. “They’re a very tough team. There’s a pretty good rivalry between us and Langley, there always has been. We enjoy playing them and I’m sure they enjoy playing us.”

McNiven, however, isn’t expecting any easy games at the tournament.

“They’re all very, very difficult teams to play against,” he said, adding that the Twins will need to use their depth to get through to the final. “When you get to a tournament like this, everybody is going to play. It’s not just nine players on the team, it’s going to take the whole 21-man roster to pull this off and we’re going to be looking for major contributions from everybody on the team to be successful on the weekend.”

The Twins know that as the No. 1 seed, teams will be gunning for them, but they are a confident bunch.

“Our offence has been very good, our defence was the top in the league – if all those things come together I think we’ll have a really good chance,” said McNiven. “We’re excited, we’re prepared, we’re ready to go. We’re going to give it everything we’ve got, and hopefully the way we’ve prepared ourselves throughout the year and the way we’ve played will get us to where we want to go in the end.”

For full tournament schedules and updated results visit bcpbl.com.