Published: August 06, 2008 05:52 am         

Bywater pitches gem and loses

DANVILLE — Left-hander Matt Bywater wasn’t facing the DuPage Dragons on Tuesday night.

Instead, the sophomore-to-be from Pepperdine was going for his fourth straight victory against the Dubois Bombers.

Unfortunately for Bywater, his recent success didn’t carry over.

The Bombers scored four runs without the benefit of a hit against Bywater in four innings en route to a 5-4 win over the Dans in the first game of a doubleheader at Danville Stadium.

“Yeah, it wasn’t DuPage,’’ Bywater admitted. “When I would throw strikes, they would hit it right at the guys. I was either getting them out or I would walk them.

“It was kind of weird to think that you could lose a game without allowing a hit.’’

Bywater, who struck out a season-high nine, walked four batters and hit another — four of those five baserunners wound up scoring.

“I gave away five free baserunners and that is always going to comeback and hurt you,’’ he said. “Any time you walk someone, you are going to be in trouble.

“It just seemed like my control was coming and going between each pitch. I didn’t know if it was going to be a strike or a ball there at the end.’’

It wasn’t just pitching problems for Danville (22-22) in the opener.

“It didn’t look like we were ready to play in the first game,’’ Danville manager Pete Paciorek said.

The Dans also committed three errors and they were guilty of going 0-for-4 with the bases loaded in the seven-inning contest.

“I think we came out and took things for granted a little bit,’’ said Danville shortstop Zach Walters, who was 1-for-3 with an RBI. “Unfortunately, we’ve had problems coming through with the bases loaded this summer.

“It makes it really hard on our pitchers, because we put more pressure on them when we cannot capitalize on our opportunities.’’

Danville, which led 1-0 in the first inning on Dabo Worthington’s RBI double, pulled within 5-4 in the sixth when two runs scored on Jon Lilly’s fielder’s choice grounder and throwing error by Dubois third baseman Zach Rowles.

But that was as close as the Dans would get as Bombers closer Chase Joiner struck out Tyler Park, and after an intentional walk to Dan Kaczrowski, Joiner got Chris Lewellyn to ground into a fielder’s choice.