BREWSTER, Mass. — After a red-hot 6–0 start, the second week of the season brought the Brewster Whitecaps back down to earth. Entering Sunday, they had lost five of their last six—a frustrating stretch marked by back-to-back games with season-high error totals, an ejection, two one-run losses, and growing tension on the field and in the dugout.

Saturday night’s fog-shortened game only added to the frustration. Called after five innings just as Brewster’s offense was starting to stir, it felt like the embodiment of their recent misfortune—promising moments cut short and momentum lost. It was the kind of loss that lingered, one they were eager to move past.

A chance to reset came against Cotuit—the Cape’s last-place team and, on paper, the kind of opponent that could help steady a team searching for its footing. Just over a week earlier, the Kettleers had snapped a six-game skid at Brewster’s expense, capitalizing on four errors in a frustrating loss to a then 1–7 club. It wasn’t the lowest moment of the slide, but it lingered. With a new week underway, Brewster was hoping to turn the page—and avoid a repeat of the mistakes that had sent them spiraling.

This time, they delivered. Sunday’s game was exactly what the Whitecaps needed—and more. A team that had recently found itself on the wrong side of one-run losses, defensive miscues, and sputtering offense finally put together a complete effort on all fronts. Behind a fast start at the plate, lockdown relief work, and a string of timely defensive plays, Brewster (8-5, 1-3 Eastern Division) flipped the script on their earlier loss to Cotuit (3-9, 2-2 Western Division). They held steady and closed the door, earning a much-needed 3–2 win to stop the slide and start the new week on the right foot.

What worked for Brewster on Sunday wasn’t just the offense they produced—it was the offense they prevented. The box score showed nine hits for Brewster and 11 for Cotuit, but the Kettleers managed just two runs thanks to the Whitecaps’ ability to limit damage in key spots. Just a few nights earlier, Brewster had dropped a game to Wareham after going 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position. This time, it was Cotuit that came up short in the clutch, finishing 1-for-9 with RISP.

“We’ve won a couple of games where we’ve only scored three runs,” Dalton Wentz (Wake Forest) pointed out. “To have that assurance, when you go out there, you know that your guys are going to throw strikes and hold other teams down. It makes it easy to go out there and try to score three or four or five runs—and have a good chance to win.”

That ability to limit damage started on the mound with Tegan Kuhns (Tennessee), the electric right-hander who struck out six in his debut against Yarmouth-Dennis while flashing a mid-90s fastball. He brought that same energy into Sunday’s outing.

Cotuit, however, wasn’t completely overmatched early. With two outs in the first, Ryne Farber (Auburn) singled to right, followed by Jack Nitili (Cincinnati), who roped an RBI double to right-center. The Kettleers made plenty of loud contact in the opening frame—but Kuhns quickly settled in.

After stranding a runner on second in the first, Kuhns faced even more trouble in the second. A leadoff double and a steal of third put a runner 90 feet away with no outs, but Kuhns leaned on his strength: missing bats. After two strikeouts in the first to escape damage, he struck out three in a row this time to leave the runner stranded.

The trend continued in the fourth and fifth. Kuhns worked around a two-out double in the fourth, then got help from catcher Carson Tinney (Texas) in the fifth, who threw out a runner trying to steal. Kuhns exited after four strong innings, allowing just one run despite traffic in nearly every frame.

Before Kuhns found his rhythm, Brewster’s bats ensured his early deficit didn’t last. Known for slow starts, the Whitecaps flipped the script with three straight singles to open the first. Josiah Ragsdale (Boston College) led off with a sharp hit, followed by newcomer Cal Fisher (Florida State), who notched his second hit in as many nights after recording his first RBI Saturday against Chatham. Wentz then singled to left, driving in Ragsdale to even the score and shift momentum early.

Fisher has quickly emerged as a bright spot in a lineup looking for answers—especially with several key bats set to depart in the coming days.

"That's a big bonus to our lineup,” Head coach Jamie Shevchik stated. “The kid that's coming in tomorrow was one of the better hitters in all of college baseball—with Brendan Lawson. You add Lawson to your lineup and Fisher to your lineup, it's pretty damn good, right? But he's been a lot better than expected so far.”

The third inning felt like a replay of Brewster’s early offense—highlighting the top of the order’s impact. Josiah Ragsdale reached on a rare catcher’s interference, and Cal Fisher followed with a single to center. Ragsdale, the Cape’s stolen base leader (12), took an extra base to reach third, putting two on for Dalton Wentz. Once again, Wentz came through with a single up the middle to score Ragsdale. With Fisher at third, Alex Sosa (Miami) lifted a sac fly to center to make it 3–1 Brewster.

Holding leads hasn’t been the issue during Brewster’s recent skid—if anything, the pitching staff has been the steadying force. The bullpen, in particular, has anchored a pitching staff that owns the second-best ERA in the Cape at 2.44, remaining a consistent strength even as other areas have faltered.

“The bullpen has been great,” Shevchik remarked. “Their job is to give us a shot to win a game. It's hard for them to go out there and have to cover six innings, five innings of baseball without giving up a run. But for the most part this summer, they've been doing it. They've been lights out.”

Leading that group has been Haiden Leffew (Texas), who took over for Kuhns and continued to show why he’s become Brewster’s go-to arm out of the pen.

He worked around a two-on jam in the fifth, but ran into deeper trouble in the sixth. After allowing back-to-back singles and hitting the next batter, the bases were loaded for Case Sanderson (Nebraska). Sanderson delivered with a sharp single to left, scoring one and sending Nolan Stevens (Mississippi State) around third as the tying run—until Blake Cyr (Florida) came up clean, fired home, and cut down Stevens at the plate to preserve the 3–2 lead.

It was a pivotal moment—just what Leffew and the rest of the Brewster arms needed to lock in and cruise the rest of the way. Leffew finished four strong innings, lowering his ERA to 2.03 over a team-leading 13.1 innings.

“Cyr made a big throw. Game changer, right?” Shevchik emphasized. “That base hit changed the entire outcome of the game… that kind of set the tone. That could have been a whole different game if he didn’t make that throw.”

Title photo credit: Casey Bayne.