NASHUA – It’s official, as the Nashua Silver Knights basically had to surrender on Monday.

The torrential morning rain yesterday, plus the mid and late afternoon showers that followed just left Historic Holman Stadium waterlogged, forcing Monday night’s game vs. the Norwich Navigators to be cancelled.

Not postponed, but cancelled. It will not be made up, and the 22-32 Silver Knights are officially eliminated from playoff contention. They went into yesterday 4.5 games behind Worcester (26-27) but would lose out on tiebreakers with both Norwich and Worcester.

Those who had tickets to Monday’s game can redeem them from the Knights for tickets to either of their final two 6:03 p.m. home games, Thursday night vs. Westfield or the home finale Friday night vs. Norwich, which will have postgame fireworks.

Thus for the fourth straight season, the Silver Knights will not take part in the FCBL Playoff Party. A tough ending despite all the careful work Knights general manager Cam Cook and manager Nick Guarino did to put together what was a competitive roster until for the second straight year things fell apart by the third week in July.

While the lineup remained fairly steady, several college coaches requested that their pitchers be shut down due to imposed innings limits and others left on their own. That impacted both the starting rotation and especially the bullpen, which had struggled much of the season anyway. The lack of pitching depth – not entirely the team’s fault – and sub-par bullpen helped destroy the Knights’ season and management’s best laid plans. Baseball IQ and defensive mistakes likely prevented the team from building up a cushion of wins to withstand those losses.

Ironically, you might not know all this from looking at the stats. Nashua is ranked third in hitting (.268) and third in pitching (4.62 earned run average).

Nashua is off today but will hit the road to New Britain on Wednesday, have its home games Thursday and Friday, then head to Vermont for Saturday’s finale.