BROOKINGS – The Aberdeen Smittys never led on the day in a pair of American Legion baseball setbacks to Brookings and Yankton on Saturday.

The Smittys gave up seven first-inning runs in an 11-5 loss to Brookings and then were blanked by Yankton 4-0.

“It was a frustrating day for us,” said Smittys coach Brandon Kusler. “In game one, our guys just didn’t come ready to play in the first inning, and several errors really cost us some runs. A good team like Brookings is going to make those mistakes hurt and they did just that.”

The Bandits had five hits, a walk, a hit batter and Aberdeen had an error in the pivotal opening frame.

Brookings finished the contest with eight hits to go along with nine walks and also took advantage of four wild pitches.

The Smittys scored twice in the second inning on a wild pitch and a ground out, once in the third on an RBI single by Andrew Woehl, and twice in the seventh on a two-run single by Jaiden Smith.

Smith finished with three hits to pace the Aberdeen attack.

“I thought we were solid offensively in game one, we just didn’t carry that into game two against Yankton,” Kusler said. “I thought we got away from our approach offensively – trying to do too much at times.”

Yankton had just seven hits in the second game, but scored a pair of runs on two Aberdeen errors.

Joe Gokie had three of Yankton’s hits and scored two runs.

Drew Salfrank had a pair of hits for the Smittys against Yankton.

Josh Steinwandt pitched six strong innings, but did not get any run support.

“Josh Steinwandt gave us another excellent start, and we have to capitalize and produce some runs when we know Josh is going to give us a chance to win,” Kusler said. “Unfortunately, we just didn’t do enough things right today to earn a win, but we need to turn the page and get ready for Pierre on Monday.”

Aberdeen concludes its regular season with a 5 p.m. doubleheader Monday in Pierre.

The Smittys are 22-21 on the season and currently in 13th place in the Class A American Legion baseball standings. The top 15 squads qualify for the post-season playoffs which begin on Friday.

Aberdeen Smittys 021 000 2 – 5 8 2

Brookings Bandits 700 202 x – 11 8 0

Casey Vining, Carter Dingman (5), Will Heinert (6) and Andrew Woehl; Lincoln Hardin, Theodosopolus (7) and Sam Hardin. 2B – Aberdeen Smittys, Jaiden Smith, Drew Salfrank; Brookings Bandits, Breck Hirrschoff.

Aberdeen Smittys 000 000 0 – 0 4 2

Yankton 002 020 x – 4 7 0

Josh Steinwandt, Brian Holmstrom (6) and Andrew Woehl; Landen Loecker and McCorkell. 2B – Yankton, Joe Gokie.