In the teams' first meeting in June, the Mitchell Stars used 15 free passes, including six Mitchell Mad Dog errors to its advantage in a 9-0 win over its in-town rival.
As far as Mad Dogs' player/manager Jason Skinner is concerned, that game is old news and figures that in the seven games since, the team has hopefully corrected any issues it had in the first game between Mitchell's two amateur baseball teams.
"Our walks have been down pitching-wise and we've been playing good defense the last couple of games," Skinner said. "Hopefully that will carry over into (Saturday)."
Game time tonight is 7 p.m. at Cadwell Park. The Mad Dogs are 13-9 overall and the Stars are 3-8 overall.
Matt Bruzewski will get the start for the Stars tonight while Derek Andersen will start on the mound for the Mad Dogs.
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"He's had a few really good games," Stars manager Jeremy Nielsen said of Bruzewski. "He keeps them off balance moving the ball in and out and he's got three pitches he can throw for strikes. With them using wood bats, I think he'll do real well."
The Mad Dogs play in the Class B dominant Sunshine League and use aluminum bats throughout much of the season, the exception being when they play another Class A team.
Nielsen said the team still isn't hitting as well as it probably should, but said it is coming along as the season winds down. The Stars have just four more scheduled games before the districts open on Aug. 4.
"We're coming along slowly and it's not where I want it to be yet," he said. "But we've got two or three guys who are starting to come around, making contact with the ball, not striking out as much and putting it in play."
Even though both teams play in the same four-team district, Skinner said the Mad Dogs still are looking at it as a normal regular-season game. The Mad Dogs go to Tripp Sunday and have five more games remaining in the regular season. Three of those games are against Sunshine League foes.
"This is pretty much just another game," Skinner said, adding the 13-9 overall mark is OK for this stage in the season. "I have to be happy with where we're at. I know there are some games where we wish we would have played better and we feel we should have won, but a lot of our losses are against really tough teams -- the Parkston Mudcats, Mount Vernons, Redfields and Geddes has a very good team this year.
"Although it would have been nice to win some of those games, we've been in some of those games and things just didn't go our way. We're not going to get too down because we lost to those teams because they're all really good."
