BREWSTER, Mass. — Tuesday’s matchup at Stony Brook Field brought together two teams heading in sharply different directions. Brewster opened the summer with a scorching 6–0 start—the best in franchise history—and looked like one of the Cape’s early juggernauts. Cotuit, meanwhile, arrived weighed down by a six-game losing streak that had snowballed—growing bigger and harder to stop with every game. One team trying to recapture its early spark. The other just hoping to stop the bleeding.

Early in the season or not, Cotuit had already been saddled with a label no team wants to carry — the league’s worst team.

That label, however, carries little weight in the ever-unpredictable Cape Cod Baseball League. Just last summer, the Harwich Mariners lost 18 of 24 games in July, endured both a nine-game and a seven-game skid, then flipped the script—winning four straight to end the month and riding that wave all the way to a championship. It served as the ultimate reminder: losing streaks can vanish, and momentum shifts fast.

Reflecting on similar swings after Brewster’s recent loss to Yarmouth-Dennis, head coach Jamie Shevchik noted, “The worst team in the league beats the best team in the league a lot.” With Brewster entering Tuesday atop the Cape standings and Cotuit anchored at the bottom, this game was a perfect example. The Whitecaps’ defense faltered significantly, committing a season-high four errors—all leading to Cotuit runs—and combined with a second straight off night from their usually reliable pitching and a noiseless offense, Brewster (6-3, 1-2 Eastern) never found their rhythm. Their 6–2 loss to the previously ice-cold Kettleers (2-7, 1-2 Western) marked the Whitecaps’ third straight defeat.

In Sunday’s loss, Brewster’s defense took center stage—for all the wrong reasons. Three errors—a season high at the time—including two costly throwing errors on bunts, plus a fielding error, led directly to three runs. After the game, Shevchik delivered a simple but urgent message: “Time to reset.” He told his team to take Monday off, enjoy the Cape, and forget about baseball for a day.

Yet somehow, the reset button felt more like a repeat button—on Tuesday, Brewster fell into the same errors, battled the same struggles, and, unsurprisingly, ended with the same final score.

“If you can't defend like we did today—when you make four errors and seven in two games—you’re not playing good baseball,” Shevchik said. “That's the part I’m worried about. I think the offense will get better as we keep going. But the scary part is, we're supposed to be defending now, and we haven't been in the last two days.”

Brewster’s first wave of misfortune came in the top of the third. After stranding a runner in scoring position in the second, Tyler Schmitt (Illinois) gave up back-to-back singles to start the inning. A strikeout and a fielder’s choice followed—but all runners were safe, loading the bases with one out. Earlier in the season, Cotuit likely wouldn’t have cashed in on the chance, and Brewster had a habit of escaping jams.

This time was different. A wild pitch from Schmitt, followed by a rushed throwing error from Carson Tinney (Texas) on a play at the plate, brought home two runs. The Whitecaps’ breaks suddenly vanished. Cotuit’s, just as suddenly, arrived.

And they didn’t stop there.

The fielding woes only deepened in the fifth. With Lance Davis (Arkansas) taking over after Schmitt lasted just three innings due to wildness on the mound, the game was left in the hands of the Brewster bullpen.

Jarren Advincula (Cal) led off with a soft single to center—a playable ball misread by Josiah Ragsdale (Boston College) that took a sharp carom and rolled all the way to the wall, allowing Advincula to race to third. One batter later, Camden Johnson (Wichita State) grounded to Dalton Wentz (Wake Forest), who tried to cut down the run at the plate.

Brewster had already thrown one away at home on Sunday, another earlier in the game—and the third time was anything but the charm. The throw sailed to the backstop, and Cotuit added its third run.

“When you make some mistakes and you start to struggle, the energy gets sucked out really quick,” Shievchik said. “(The energy) was there. We were up 1-0, and then the bubble kind of burst when we started making mistakes. It's almost like you sit around waiting for the next mistake, and that can't be the team that we have.”

The “next mistakes” came in the seventh when Tinney’s throwing error to third on a stolen base let P.J. Moutzouridis (Cal) score Cotuit’s fourth run. The only error-free inning Brewster played a part in where Cotuit scored was the ninth—a mere formality in an already out-of-reach game.

Shevchik also pointed to Brewster’s defensive struggles as a lens through which to evaluate their own offensive performance. Cotuit wasn’t overpowering Brewster with high-octane hitting—they were simply putting balls in play and forcing the Whitecaps to make plays. “There’s no bad bounces in the air,” Shevchik said, referencing Brewster’s five pop-outs, three flyouts, and ten strikeouts. That meant only nine of Brewster’s 27 outs—or just 33%—actually “challenged” Cotuit’s defense.

While the defense bore much of the blame for the loss, scoring just four runs over three games can’t be overlooked. On Tuesday, the offense managed only four hits and put just three runners in scoring position—a troubling trend for a lineup head coach Jamie Shevchik said he had full confidence in.

“I was really excited before this game when I wrote the lineup down, because to me, it is probably what I think our best offensive lineup that we can put out there was today,” Shevchik said.

Despite the optimism around the lineup, the heart of Brewster’s order came up empty. The top four hitters went a combined 0-for-15, including stars like Ragsdale and Daniel Cuvet (Miami). Ragsdale entered the game leading the Cape in AVG, RBI, stolen bases, and OBP, but has managed just one hit in his last three games. Brewster has lost all three—an early indication that the offense might be too dependent on one bat.

“Look what Josiah has done in nine games; he hasn't had many hits in the last three, right?” Shevchik said. “We've been feeding off one guy for the most part; we've got to figure out who the next Josiah is. He needs to be complemented by somebody else in the lineup. The next guy doesn't have to hit .400, but we do need to get some guys, a couple of guys, hitting .250… So it can't be just a one-man show.”

Title photo credit: Casey Bayne.