Sunday Afternoon in Fredericksburg

It wasn’t pretty, but the first-place FredNats managed to eke out an 11-9 win in the series finale to break even with second-place Salem. Despite the pitch clock, the game took three hours and 23 minutes to complete.

The first inning was the only one in which neither team scored, with Salem going down in order and Fredericksburg drawing three walks but coming away empty. After that, it was was a back-and-forth battle: the Red Sox would get two, Fredericksburg would answer with four. The Red Sox reclaimed the lead at 5-4, but the FredNats took advantage of an error, a Robles, and two more walks to tie it.

Pitching was not the name of the game. Fredericksburg gave up 13 hits while Salem issued nine walks, balked twice, hit two batters, and threw six wild pitches.

Truth be told (no, lie to us!) the hitting wasn’t exactly clutch. The two teams combined for just seven hits in 35 RISP chances and left on 19 baserunners.

The turning point came when Angel Roman came on and finally stopped Salem from scoring for two innings, followed by Merrick Baldo for one. Meanwhile the Fredericksburg offense got two runs on a balk and the second of two RBI groundouts by Seaver King hin the 6th and a solo HR from Nick “Power to the” Peoples in the 7th to knot things up at 8-8.

The FredNats didn’t so much win the game as the Red Sox gave it away: A hit-by-pitch, a stolen base and two wild pitches enabled them to score three times on just one hit, albeit on Nate Rombach’s second double.

Anthony Arguelles picked up the save but not before giving up a solo HR to make the final score, 11-9. It was the second straight outing in which he was credited with a save despite giving up a run of his own.

With the win, Fredericksburg improves to 29-19 in the second half and leads the C.L. North by two games. Starting tomorrow, they embark on a two-week road trip to Columbia and Kannapolis before returning home the week after Labor Day.