3/20/2008 - Mustangs shutout the Devils as Northender’s winning streak continues following a string of errors fr

The Devils performance in their game against the Mustangs last Saturday wasn't even close to how they played the Tornadoes last week, where they scored 6 runs. This time their opposing team scored 16 runs too, but the feat took the Mustangs just 2 innings and 1 hour. We saw a good performance by Mustangs pitcher Mark Buttigieg, who had some control problems last season but showed improvement in this game. The Mustangs bats also came alive to the despair of the Devils who have been improving offensively lately. The Devils managed to get hits from Claude Busutil and Robert Mifsud but the rest of the line up was rather stopped by Mark Buttigieg’s pitching or by a solid Mustang defence. The Mustangs catcher Shawn Ritchie hit a pop-fly straight to the pitcher to start off the bottom of the 2nd inning, but the Mustangs then went through the next 8 batters, who each scored a run, before the Devils managed to make the 2nd out, on another fly-ball by Ritchie. After facing another 4 batters, Devil’s pitcher Busuttil was replaced on the mound by John Farrugia, who unfortunately did not manage to limit the damage. In fact 4 runs were scored before Reuben Gatt, was tagged out at home for the last out of the inning. But the damage was done and the game had to be stopped once again due to the run-difference rule with the final score 16-0.

Home advantage didn’t favor the Gozo Tornadoes on Sunday as they went down 16-6 to the Northenders who remain unbeaten. This game seemed like it could have gone either way up until the 8th inning when the Northenders scored 3 runs and then another 7 runs in the 9th inning. What seemed to be a battle between the starting pitchers initially with Michael Bartolo for the Northenders striking out 10 batters and Charles Attard striking out 8 ended up in Mellieha’s favor as the Gozitan defense made some vital errors in the 4th inning and again in the late innings. Steven Galea had 2 hits from his four appearances at the plate for Gozo, one of them a triple. Mellieha’s Matthew Grech also hit a triple with a line drive down the third baseline. Ryan Borg then got a base hit driving in Matthew Grech to score the first run of game in the third inning. Steven Galea replaced Charles Attard in the 5th inning after his pitching seemed to suffer when he previously collided with a Mellieha player running the bases. In the bottom of the 6th inning the Northenders, with the score in 6-3 in their favor, brought on Marlon Borg to pitch relieving Michael Bartolo. The Northenders weren’t exactly on top of their game either as they had 7 errors in this game but still remained on top throughout as they were that little bit better, up until the last few innings where Gozo gave up too many runs committing a total of 12 errors.