CADIZ — The Beast of the East Baseball Tournament is a grind.

To be able to compete well, especially in the 19U bracket, a team needs to have plenty of pitching.

That’s been an issue for the Cadiz Post 34 squad this summer, which led manager Jerry Graham to make a tough decision late last week.

Graham informed Beast of the East officials that his squad wouldn’t be taking part in the annual tournament, which opened today, as he wanted to avoid taxing his already thin pitching staff with upwards of eight games in the next four days.

“We don’t have enough pitching to get through that many games,” Graham said. “It’s been the same every year we’ve played in it. All of our guys have sore arms or other injuries going into our (district) tournament, which is a couple of weeks away.”

Post 34 is currently 2-8 on the season and has been battling numbers problems all season. Its two victories came by identical 13-12 scores against Richmond and Toronto.

Cadiz had to cancel its game with St. Clairsville just a few weeks ago due to lack of players.

“Mike (Muklewicz) has been great with us and if we’re able to make up that game, we will,” Graham said.

As for the Beast, Graham hadn’t paid his team’s entry fee, which would have been non-refundable, making the decision to withdraw much easier.

“I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the guys involved with the Beast of the East,” Graham said.

Graham has been efforting to replace those games on the schedule, but mutual open dates with other area legion team are tough to come by at this point.

“With it being so late in the season, it’s difficult to schedule any regular season games,” Graham admitted. “(Wheeling) Post 1 and (Steubenville) Post 33 have hectic schedules trying to fit everything in. We were able to get another game with Richmond before the Region 8 tournament starts.”

Mazeroski Field in Cadiz is still playing host to the event all weekend. Graham will serve as the site manager and maintain the fields.