If it wasn't for some early season troubles in the field, Weyburn Beavers head coach Bob Narkaus says the team would be undefeated at 3-0 and would be sitting in first place atop the Western Major Baseball League eastern division standings with a cushion heading into this weekend's June 3-5 Alberta swing.

However, errors in the field in each of the Beavers' first two games cost the team big, and threatened to sink them in game number three as well. Fortunately, Weyburn pitcher Mike Larson turned in seven strong innings on the mound, silencing nine Saskatoon bats with strikeouts while reliever Cory Neer finished up with two hitless innings as the Beavers earned their first victory 5-3 over the Saskatoon Yellow Jackets Sunday afternoon in front of 75 spectators at Tom Laing Park.

The Beavers dropped their season-opener Friday night at Regina 5-3 on five unearned runs, and lost their home-opener Saturday night before 60 spectators 10-6 after surrendering four unearned runs on 12 hits. Tyrel Hansen took the loss Friday night and Rene Gutierrez was tagged with Saturday night's defeat.

Including the three unearned runs yielded to Saskatoon on Sunday, the Beavers allowed a total of 12 runs to cross the plate unearned over the team's three-game opening weekend. Weyburn Beavers pitching, however, held opposition teams to just six earned runs, all coming Saturday night versus Saskatoon. All opposition runs came as a result of Weyburn fielding errors.

"We should be 3-0. The first game we lost 5-3 and we gave up five unearned runs. Second game we lost 10-6 and of those 10, four were unearned runs. We threw the ball around quite a bit, so basically we threw those games away," said Coach Narkaus.

"And then (Sunday) we played very well except for a couple of innings where we started to throw the ball around again. We almost did it to ourselves, so if we can stop doing that, we're going to be a tough team to beat this year.

"They definitely want to make it exciting for some reason," Narkaus said with a laugh, confident the team would learn the ropes of playing ground balls off wood bats.

The WMBL bills itself as Canada's "Wood Bat Collegiate League", and he blames fielder unfamiliarity with the movement of the ball off wooden bats for most of the team's errors. (Players take their swings in college ball using aluminum bats.)

"It's going to take some adjusting because for a lot of these guys, it's their first time reading a wood bat ground ball, and it's much different than aluminum."

Narkaus explained the bounce off a wood bat is less lively than off aluminum, and that throws players for a loop.

"They're used to a different spin. We're just not coming to get the ball yet - we're letting the ball play us. A couple more games and a lot more practice and those plays won't be mistakes anymore."

And besides adjusting to ground balls off wooden bats, Narkaus says the team, to him, looks primed for a great summer.

"So far this season our (pitching) staff has been excellent, but our defence has let us down and we've left a lot of runners in scoring position. I'm looking to improve on that too as the season goes by.

"I know we have more depth and more talent and it's just whether the boys play to their ability game-in and game-out."

Weyburn will hit the road this weekend with games in Calgary, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat. Despite playing on the road, Narkaus doesn't anticipate any problems stealing some victories away from western division rivals.

"We head out on Friday to see what's out there. I'm not worried about it; I know my boys are looking forward to it, and I know we're going to compete."

In Sunday's win versus Saskatoon, Beavers' rightfielder Mike Collins went 2-for-2 with 3 RBI and a walk, while third baseman Adam Balan and shortstop Joel Graf both went 2-for-4 at the plate with one run scored each.

On Saturday night, centrefielder Cole Reynolds went 3-for-5 with a run while Balan, Graf, and leftfielder Zack Bireley all went 2-for-4. Graf scored once and knocked in two, Balan scored twice and knocked in one, and Bireley scored one and drove one in. On Friday night, Matt Larson was 1-for-4 with 2 RBI.