By Robb Fenton
The Lloydminster Twins capped off their regular season in style this past Sunday afternoon at Legion Ball Park.
The Twins earned a 12-0 win over the Lloydminster Jays and completed a perfect season, going 14-0 and finishing on top of the NSRBL standings.
“It was good. It was our last test to go undefeated in the regular season, 14-0 is real good. We hit the ball really good,” Twins pitcher Warren Stang said. “We didn’t see their top pitcher, but it doesn’t matter, we hit well. We were good defensively, so overall it was good.”
Stang threw a complete game shutout, only allowing one hit and only a few baserunners the entire game as he picked up his sixth win of the season.
Entering the playoffs on a high note is a big plus for the Twins, who will look for their second league title in as many years.
“Even if you start off not playing that great, if you finish up good at the end of the season going into playoffs and the provincial run, that’s big. We want to go in with some wins and momentum,” Stang said.
On the other side of the field, the Jays didn’t play a poor game, but couldn’t generate any offence and trailed from the first inning on.
“We couldn’t get on the bats. Warren is hittable, he’s good, but he should be hittable and we just couldn’t get the bats going,” Jays player/coach Clayton Ermel said. “We were trying to save some pitching, we have a provincial playoff series against Battleford, so pitching we kind of kept to our relievers.”
Ermel admitted to saving some pitching for a provincial playoff series coming up, but also said he knows the team has to pick up their play offensively.
“We’re going into the Battleford series with all of our pitching healthy, we just need to get on the bats more,” he explained.
With the crosstown rivalry in full swing, Stang said it was easy for the Twins to get up for their final regular season game against the Jays.
“It’s good to pitch on a nice day like this and everyone was pretty pumped up to play another Lloyd team, so everyone was ready to play,” he said.
“We showed we can stand up to whatever tests and it’s good to show what we’ve got. It’s the Jays, so you always want to beat them.”
With provincial playdowns and playoffs coming up, both teams know they need to be at their best if they want to make any noise down the road.
“We don’t want to take too much time off, so we’ll practice to keep the bats going and keep everyone playing so we don’t get too cold going into the playoffs,” Stang said.
“We knew we were in the playoffs already, so the game wasn’t so important to us in the standings and that’s why we’re gearing up for this provincial series against Battleford,” Ermel added. “We’re putting all our effort towards that right now and playoffs should start in the next week or so and when we get there, we’ll deal with that.”
The Jays take on the North Battleford Beavers tonight.