By Scott Elpers

Victories have been scarce for the Derby Twins this season, but seeing El Dorado on the upcoming schedule has been a welcome sight for the struggling baseball team. 

Derby topped El Dorado 6-2 for its fourth victory of the season on June 14 – its third win against El Dorado.

Derby used the blowing wind to its advantage on offense. Cody Silverman sailed one deep past the left-field wall for a home run in the bottom of the first inning. One inning later, Chris Lindmark homered to left field to give the Twins a 2-0 lead.

“With the way the wind was blowing tonight, no lead was a safe lead,” Twins head coach Billy Hall said.

After Lindmark’s home run, Derby was able to tack on two more runs before the end of the inning. Zach Stucky scored on a wild pitch and Mike Parsons scored on an RBI single from Ethan Loosen to go up 4-0 after two innings. 

Then the Twins cooled off on offense and failed to string hits together or add more runs on the scoreboard for a few innings. El Dorado scored its first run of the game in the top of the fourth and added another in the seventh to cut Derby’s lead to 4-2.

“We have to get over that hump. We can’t start out hot and go through the middle part of the game and lay down and at the end try to pick it up,” Hall said. “Because a team is going to swing the bats a little better than what El Dorado did. They are probably going to put more pressure on us. Then we’ll be in a dog fight.”

Derby added two insurance runs late in the game to secure the win. 

After the win against El Dorado, the Twins dropped three straight games on a road trip to Liberal. The Twins lost the first game 8-4, the second 6-4 and the third 8-1. As of Sunday, the Twins were 4-10 on the season. Derby finishes up a two-game contest against Haysville on Wednesday and hosts a three-game series against Hays starting on Friday.