Last Night In Charleston

After stranding nine baserunners in nine innings, the Suns couldn’t turn the trick one more time — or a double play — and lost to the Power in the bottom of the 10th on an error, 2-1.

There were just four clean innings out of the 20 between the two teams, as both squads had something brewing in nearly every inning.

Hagerstown got on the board first with Matt Skole’s league-leading 62nd walk. Steve Souza followed with a line-drive to left. But as you might have guessed with all those LOBs, the run came around on the more mundane as West Virginia’s Zach Von Rosenberg plunked Brett Newsome and walked Cole Leonida with two outs.

Christian Meza returned the favor by hitting Power DH Dan Gamache to lead off the second before giving up back-to-back singles to give up the equalizer. Skole turned a tag-the-bag, toss-across-the-diamond DP, and after walking the #9 batter and giving up an IF single the leadoff slot, Meza struck out the #2 man to end the inning.

The Suns got leadoff hits in the 3rd, 6th, and 8th innings but couldn’t push across the second. They even loaded the bases in the 9th with one out, but Billy Burns struck out, giving Toastman Rod Blackstone a chance to make yet another, um, crumby joke.

The Power also had chances, getting the lead man on five times before they finally broke through in the 10th, as a single, walk, sacrifice, and an intentional walk set up Jose Osuna. In the 8th, Osuna hit into a 4-6-3 twin-killing, and for just a moment, it looked Greg Holt would escape the jam with a tapper to short that Jason Martinson retrieved and fired over to Cutter Dykstra, who sailed it into the stands on what would have been a close play for the loss.

Christian Meza started but got the no-decision, giving up a run on five hits with three walks, a hit batsmen, and two strikeouts. Lost in the boxscore is Colin Bates’ three scoreless frames with just one hit and one walk allowed to go with four strikeouts. Greg Holt took the loss with a run on two hits and two walks (one intentional) over one and 2/3rds.

With a Greensboro win roughly a half hour earlier, Harrisburg was eliminated from the playoff hunt in the Sally League’s North Division. The two teams meet again this afternoon to finish the four-game series and the first half, with Alex Meyer (6-3, 3.31) taking the hill vs. Nick Kingham (1-4, 5.57).