Playing under a dull gray overcast and the infrequent sprinkles of rain, Bradford’s defensive deficiencies hurt the Owls baseball team in its season finale.

The Owls committed seven errors, helping Brookville (9-7) sprint past them with explosive hitting, 14-4, at Pitt-Bradford Wednesday.

Trailing 2-0 in the 4th inning, Jamison Rhoades led an offensive counter-effort for Brookville reaching on a single, touching second on a balk, third on a passed ball and eventually scoring on a ground out. The Raiders lineup followed suit, attacking the base paths and scoring on gifted opportunities by the Owls’ defense.

Hunter Greer walked, stole second, reached third on a passed ball and scored on a single from Carson Weaver. Weaver then stole third and scored on an error.

The Owls registered two errors, one passed ball, one wild pitch and one balk in the frame, prompting the Brookville dugout to holler “we love free stuff” as they took their first lead in reference to the unforced miscues the Owls committed. And in the final box score, just seven of Brookville’s 14 runs registered as earned.

“I thought our defensive effort was pretty poor,” Bradford coach Eric Haynoski said. “I think we normally do a better job on defense, especially these last couple of games and last week, but all season we kept giving up that big inning and made some defensive errors and just got caught sleeping.”

On the mound, Bradford starter Cam Austin kept the Raiders at bay for the first three frames, using a slider and a two-seam fastball to allow light contact and produce groundouts, flyouts and popouts.

“(Austin) gave up a lot of fly balls and our players were there,” Haynoski said. “He was pitching a heck of a game and was hitting spots.”

But due to their inability to make easy outs and prevent free base running, the Raiders chased Austin off the mound after just four innings and 63 pitches. Austin surrendered three runs, two earned, struck out one and walked a pair.

“Kudos to (Austin) because he really kept us off-balance,” Brookville coach Brad Weaver said. “He got a lot of guys dipping and as a result produced a lot of flyball outs. They didn’t play great defense behind him so I think that led to a little bit of frustration on their end and we scored some runs not the way we wanted to.”

Ashton Smith took over pitching duties for the Owls in the 5th and, following the sloppy 4th, the offensive flood gates opened for Brookville.

The Raiders located and barreled up Smith’s hard-throwing, leading to seven runs in the frame. Owen Caylor doubled into the left field corner and Griffin Ruhlman drove him home with a sacrifice fly. Carter Kessler hit a double into right field to score a pair and Bryce Rafferty did the same with a single to center.

Before it was all said and done, the Raiders led 10-2, and Caylor came up again in the inning to single home two more runs on a line drive to left center field.

Carson Weaver highlighted the Brookville offense, finishing with three hits, scoring three times and driving in one run. Rhoades also finished with two hits and scored twice.

“(Bradford) has got a decent pile of arms but I think we just put a couple of balls in odd spots like pop-ups and where the wind was playing to our advantage,” Weaver said.

The minimal Owl offense came from few gifted opportunities on the basepaths presented by Brookville.

In the 2nd inning, Ryan Ward took the first pitch he saw off the back of his helmet, turned to his dugout and gave a confident but measured grin knowing it was just the hole he needed to score. Ward scampered to second on an error, reached third on a single from Jack Wells and touched home on a ground out.

In the 3rd inning, Elijah Fitton took advantage of another gifted opportunity for the Owls. After reaching first on an error, Fitton stole second, touched third on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly from Austin.

Jack Wells finished 2-for-3 and Austin posted a 2-for-4 outing while driving in one run and scoring once to lead Bradford.

But for most of the game, Greer, the Raiders’ starter, kept the Owls’ offense at bay and without a chance of a comeback.

Greer used his slider, curve and fastballs to nibble the outside of the plate and pound the inside to right-handed batters. Greer finished with five strikeouts and surrendered just six hits and two earned runs over the complete game.

“(Greer) is efficient. He works fast. He throws a lot of strikes,” Weaver said. “And then tonight his curveball started to bite a little bit so he could pitch beyond 40 pitches.”

The Owls failed to qualify for the postseason, but after a season of ups and downs at the plate and in the field, Haynoski feels they have a checklist of things to improve on and build off of before next spring.

“I have been allowing the kids to check out a little bit and hopefully we can do a better job next year,” Haynoski said.

AT BRADFORD

R H E

Brookville 000 372 2 14 11 3

Bradford 011 003 0 4 6 7

Brookville: Hunter Greer (5 SO, 2 BB) and Carson Weaver

Bradford: Cameron Austin (1 SO, 2 BB), Ashton Smith (5) (1 SO, 3 BB), Liam Haven (6) (4 SO, 0 BB) and Liam McKay