Cueva's Blast Beats Rome 4-3

Hickory, NC- Danyer Cueva's fourth inning home run lifted the Hickory Crawdads to a 4-3 win over the Rome Emperors on the final Fireworks Friday night in front of 3,131 fans at the Frans.

Brayan Mendoza picked up the win for the Crawdads, allowing one earned run over six innings while striking out seven Rome batters to claim his first win in a Hickory uniform. The outing for the Venezuelan left-hander was capped by a sixth inning where he struck out the side.

Ivan Oviedo pitched the final three innings in the win for Hickory, picking up the save. He surrendered two walks in the three scoreless frames, as Hickory picked up their first win of the series.

Offensively, the Crawdads collected eight hits; with seven of those hits going for extra bases. Malcolm Moore doubled twice, Sebastian Walcott and Yosy Galan tripled and Cueva added a double to his first homer of the season for Hickory.

The difference for Hickory was in the fourth inning, as Galan's one-out triple would produce a run on a wild pitch, scoring the outfielder to level the score at 3-3. Cueva, the next batter up, drove the ball over the wall in right-center field to give Hickory their first lead at 4-3.

From there, Mendoza and Oviedo held the lead, allowing only one hit the rest of the way against Rome.

The Crawdads will send D.J. McCarty to the bump in the penultimate game of the season at 7pm on Saturday. The Crawdads Pregame Show will begin at 6:45pm on MiLB.TV, the Bally Live app and hickorycrawdads.com.