#17. July 24th, 2028
This week was the best of our season so far, we had played a home & home series with San Antonio and OK, they were on a four-game slide but that hadn’t normally stopped us from falling to defeats. The first game of the away series was made a real pitchers duel between
Eduardo Romano and the Calzones’ Leon Gil who had been 2-11 for the season. In fact the eight total walks in the game was more than the number of hits which was just six between the seven pitchers that had entered the game. We took the win thanks’ to
Carlos Ryan’s one-out solo-homer in the third innings, his 14th of the season was enough for a 1-0 win.
The second game had more offense, but it was nick & tuck all the way. Three times we took the lead and three times San Antonio pulled it back.
Jose Morin left after seven with the score at 3-3 having given up seven hits & three runs. The bullpen kept it clean into extra innings despite the visitors getting a runner on third in the bottom of the ninth with only one out. Finally we got the winning run in the 12th thanks to a walk, single and finally an error as the first baseman booted an easy chance to get out of the innings allowing
Shojiro Kotara to scoot home from third for the vital fourth run. San Antonio still got a runner to third in the bottom of the innings, but we held on.
The third game finally provided some offence, we scored a run in the first, second and fourth innings to give us a seemingly comfortable 3-0 lead.
Ralph Morris though allowed two runs in the sixth though to give the visitors hope of snapping their six-game losing streak and we were lucky to get away with only two runs conceded as Calzones sent eight batters to the plate. Back-up catcher
Neil Avery extended our lead to 4-2 in the seventh and although Calzones closed once more to within a single run they could not get closer. Doubles by
Jack Allen &
Walter Daniel scored the insurance run in the ninth. Morris gratefully squared his record at 5-5 as we swept San Antonio and headed home for the second three-games set with Calzones.
We made a strong start to the home series with three hits and three walks in the bottom of the first plating five runs. That proved enough for the win, the visitors not helping themselves by adding seven walks to the 15 hits we banged out. We padded the score with a run in the seventh and
Walter Daniel’s 10 homer, a two-run shot, in the eighth.
Maxime Labrie improved his record to 4-4 with eight innings allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out nine.
Walter Daniel has had 16 hits, nine for doubles and three homers in the last 11 games , driving in eight runs
Second game of the series
Curt Mills allowed several hits, but was able to keep them off the board early on.
Walter Daniel’s 20th double of the season in the fourth innings led to the opening run when
Luis Cedeño drove him in next batter. Mills went into the eighth innings but allowed three singles and San Antonio, mired in their eight-game losing streak, tied the game with two out.
Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown came on and relieved him, striking out the final batter of the innings. Brown then kept the scores level at one after striking out the side in the top of the ninth. Daniel was the hero again when second ball of the bottom of the ninth he delivered a solo walk-off homer to run our winning streak to a season tying longest streak of five-games.
Romano & Gil duelled it out again in the last game of the series and again base runners were in short supply. Gil walked two and the pair shared ten hits allowed over 14 innings of work. It was the visitors that blinked first as
Walter Daniel came home in the fourth innings on a two-out error by San Antonio at first base. We kept it going again into the eighth before history repeated itself and the visitors tied it at one late on for the second game running. Brown was the fireman we called in again to save the winning streak with five outs to get.
Haden Shawver, who hasn’t been as good as hoped when we brought him in recently, drove in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth and Brown completed the job with another five out save. San Antonio slipped to 0-10 in the last ten games while we stretched our winning streak to a season best six games and returned to a .500 record.
Not much in the way of transactions or anything else this week,
Walter Winston has less than two weeks left of his rehab stint at Lincoln left so a decision there will have to be made soon while
Bob Jackson has cleared waivers and reported to Lincoln. If he knuckles down and plays well in Triple-A he might well head back to Hartford to replace Shawver whose .194 average and four RBI from nine games isn’t really setting the world alight.