By the time the third game of the Ottawa Titans series with the Lake Erie Crushers came to an end, you needed a canoe to play in the infield. Rain pelted down on Ottawa Stadium, as water filled the stands flooding the first row entirely only to escape onto the field and eventually down the dugout stairs. The game was officially called in the eighth inning, finishing with a 10-2 win for the Titans.
The Titans did the vast majority of their damage in the third inning, scoring seven runs on just two hits as Kyle Seebach launched wild pitch after wild pitch in his first ever start for the Crushers. Originally, it appeared as if the Crushers had gotten out of the inning thanks to an interference call, but the umpires convened and reverse the call, giving Ottawa a second chance. The Titans went on to score five more runs, capping off a seven-run third inning.
“It was called backswing interference,” Titans’ manager Bobby Brown said. “That means if [the catcher] throws the ball, [both the batter and the runner] are out. He doesn’t, and the [runner] just has to go back [to first base].”
“They just kept grinding away with their at-bats, and I think we ended up scoring four or five runs after that.”
While the Titans batted around and the umpires took some time to get the call right, Tyler Jandron, Ottawa’s starting pitcher on the afternoon was sitting in the dugout for nearly 40 minutes waiting to get back on the mound. In a move not often seen, Jandron made his way out to the Titans’ bullpen and started throwing between innings, keeping himself ready for the fourth inning, whenever it came.
“The long breaks between innings, those are hard to stay mentally locked in,” Jandron said. “If it’s moving around, throwing a little bit more, or just taking to try to lock it back in. Those are the challenging things about those types of games.”
“It felt like a long time, so I was just trying to stay loose,” he said, rehashing why he went down to the bullpen while the Titans were batting in the third inning. “I was trying to stay warm and keep moving. Overall, I thought it was a competitive game.”
Of anyone to take the mound for either team on Sunday afternoon, Jandron was the one who seemed to have the most control over the baseball for the entire game. The rain was falling hard, and the ball was slick, but he says that he trusted his own abilities, and put those potential distractions out of his mind in order to execute.
“You can make it what it is,” Jandron said. “This wasn’t as bad as what I have been a part of, so it wasn’t a horrible time out there. At the end of the day, it’s visualizing and executing the pitch and seeing the pitch before it’s thrown. Whatever pitch is called, let’s trust it. Obviously, it’s not ideal weather, but you have to deal with the ups and downs of it.”
“I want to be out there, and I want to go go go,” he continued. “Once we cross those lines, I’m there to execute a pitch. If I start looking ahead and saying let’s try to do this or let’s try to do that, that’s when guys get in trouble. I thought I did a good job of that today.”
The win clinched the series win for the Titans, the first time they ended a series with a win since they won three out of four games against the Empire State Greys before the All-Star break. The Titans are back in action on Tuesday night for a home series agist the West Division-leading Washington Wild Things.
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