For seven innings, the FredNats pitchers were on their game – holding the Hillcats to one run on two hits and five walks. Unfortunately, those were sandwiched in between a four-run 1st and a four-run 9th for a 9-4 loss.
As noted in this morning’s News & Notes, the Fredericksburg bullpen has been asked to cover for starters who can’t (or aren’t allowed to) go more than four innings.
Case in point: Travis “Sunday” Sthele, who retired just two of eight batters faced while throwing 35 pitches. He allowed four runs on five hits and a walk and struck out nobody.
To the FredNats batters’ credit—though they have to be used to this by now— they came to the plate in the first and didn’t panic, getting two of those runs back on a “rehabbing” Jeremy De La Rosa double and back-to-back two-out singles by Marcus Brown and Armando Cruz.
Lynchburg got an unearned run in the top of the 2nd, but Fredericksburg answered again in the 2nd as De La Rosa (it’s been 16 games in case you were wondering about the quotes) singled in Chrithian Vaquero, who reached on an error to start the inning.
And then the game settled into a more normal pattern, with Kevin Rodriguez shutting down the Hillcats for three innings, then Samuel Vasquez added two donuts to the scoreboard while Moises Diaz got a little lucky when Ralphy Vleazquez drilled a would-be double off the batter’s eye then passed the runner, who had reached on a leadoff walk, on the basepaths to turn it into a single and an out.
Diaz then picked off the runner at second to end the threat in the 7th and then set the side down in order in the 8th.
The FredNats offense crept to within one with a fourth run in the 5th and then got both the tying and go-ahead runs on in the 8th. Alas, De La Rosa couldn’t collect a fourth hit and struck out to end the last, best threat.
Dannel Diaz, who had already worked twice in the series, was the fourth reliever and could not keep the Star Trek convention going on the top half of the stadium scoreboard. Instead, the Hillcats scratched for four runs in the 9th to put the game out of reach and win the series, 4-2 – the first series loss for Fredericksburg this season.
The FredNats go back out on the road, heading down 95 to NC-70 to Grainger Stadium for the final time, with the Wood Ducks set to relocate to Spartanburg in 2025.