The Aberdeen Smittys weren’t unable to slow down the Brookings Bandits in a pair of five-inning setbacks Tuesday evening at Fossum Field.

Brookings won the first game 13-0 and claimed the second contest 18-7 in the American Legion baseball doubleheader.

The Smittys managed just two hits in the opener. JaSean Rivera hit a single in the bottom of the third and Benny Eisenbiesz singled in the bottom of the fourth.

Aberdeen got rolling early in the second contest, taking a 4-0 lead after the first inning thanks to an RBI groundout by Michael Dutenhoffer, two wild pitches and an Eisenbiesz RBI single.

Both teams went scoreless in the second inning, before Brookings jumped in front with five runs in the top of the third.

“The first two innings were good,” said Aberdeen coach Josh Steinwandt. “We scored four runs in the first and it looked like we were having fun, playing good offense and pitching well. I thought it was maybe the spark we needed, but once that third inning hit, it went downhill, then just spiraled.”

The Smittys couldn’t respond in the bottom of the inning and the Bandits got right back to it in the top of the fourth, tacking on three more runs to extend the lead to 8-4.

In the bottom of the fourth, Smittys leadoff hitter Levi Hoffman hit a bomb outside of the park to slice the deficit down to three runs.

“It felt pretty good,” Hoffman said. “I haven’t gotten a good hit in a while, so it felt good.”

The Smittys weren’t able to score any more runs in the inning, and Brookings then broke the game open putting up 10 runs in the top of the fifth inning to push the margin to 18-5.

​Hoffman said it’s difficult when the team goes through hitting slumps.

“It’s pretty tough,” Hoffman said. “But it feels good once you start to come out of it.”

The Smittys scored twice in the bottom of the fifth with RBIs from Hoffman and Eisenbiesz, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the game being called on the 10-run rule after five innings.

Jackson Post and Hoffman each had a pair of hits for Aberdeen.

Steinwandt talked about the team’s approach at the plate.

“I think we’re just taking at-bats off and pitches off,” Steinwandt said. “Good teams don’t do that. They’re locked in the first pitch until the last pitch of the game, and I don’t think right now that we’re really locked in for the full game. We have spurts where we show what this team can do, but once it starts spiraling, we just can’t get ourselves out of the hole.”

The Smittys will now look ahead to Thursday when they host the Palace City Baseball Association in a doubleheader at Fossum Field with the first game starting at 1 p.m.

“I’m just looking for the boys to have fun and play a full seven-inning ball game,” Steinwandt said. “It’s been a while since we played a full seven innings of good baseball. I just hope, win or lose, we put together a good seven innings of baseball. I’ll be happy with that even if we lose.”

Hoffman said the Smittys need to be able to provide more consistent offense.

“We just really need to keep working hard in practice,” Hoffman said. “We need to keep it steady through the whole game and keep scoring through the entire game instead of scoring zero, zero, one, two. We need to score one, two, or three an inning.”

Brookings Bandits 463 00 – 13 13 0

Aberdeen Smittys 000 00 – 0 2 4

Nolan Krogman and Ben Schulte; Drake Soderlund, JaSean Rivera (3) and Levi Hoffman. 2B – Brookings Bandits, Jay Harris, Cooper Schneider, Talon Hyde.

Brookings Bandits 005 3(10) – 18 9 0

Aberdeen Smittys 400 12 – 7 9 3

Cooper Schneider and Jase Bauer; Branson Peterson, Jackson Post (5), Jehiel Aviles (5), Karson Borge (5) and Levi Hoffman. 2B – Brookings Bandits, Baker Hanson. 3B – Brookings Bandits, Nolan Krogman. HR – Aberdeen Smittys, Levi Hoffman.