MYRTLE BEACH, SC - The 11th blown save of the year spoiled a great start by Richelson Peña as the Pelicans walked-off on the Wood Ducks 7-6 in 10 innings. Matt Rose hit a solo home run to left in the 10th off Tyler Ferguson to claim Myrtle Beach's second
MYRTLE BEACH, SC - The 11th blown save of the year spoiled a great start by Richelson Peña as the Pelicans walked-off on the Wood Ducks 7-6 in 10 innings. Matt Rose hit a solo home run to left in the 10th off Tyler Ferguson to claim Myrtle Beach's second consecutive win.
Pena worked seven innings in a quality start, and exited the game with a 6-2 lead. He was equally efficient as his last start, with 23 of 27 at-bats ending in four pitches or fewer. The Dominican righty also did not have a walk for the third start this season.
Even with Pena's impressive numbers, the Pelicans scored first in the second. With two outs, Connor Myers knocked a single to left-center to score Trent Giambrone. But in the top of the third, Adbert Alzolay could not contain the Woodies for a shutdown inning.
With two outs, Ledarious Clark knocked a single into left field to score Brallan Perez . It was Clark's first of three run-scoring knocks in the game. Pena ran a streak of 10 consecutive batters retired in a row after the RBI single in the second.
Down East added two more runs in the fifth to take the lead thanks to a Clark double and a Josh Morgan single. For Morgan, the single extends his team-leading RBI total to 27. Clark still wasn't done two innings later, with another two-out single to score Matt Lipka in his Wood Ducks debut.
The score was 4-1 entering the bottom of the seventh, but another Myers RBI - this time on a sacrifice fly - made it a two-run game, 4-2. In the next half inning, Preston Scott connected on his first hit with Down East - a two-run home run to left field to push the lead to four runs.
But the Pelicans matched the dinger with their own from Cubs top prospect Eloy Jiménez. The two-run shot made score 6-4 on reliever Kelvin Vasquez . He would be lifted for Ferguson's Wood Ducks debut in the ninth for the save.
Robert Garcia led off with a single and made it to third on back-to-back groundouts for the first two outs of the ninth. PJ Higgins squeaked a single through the left side to score Garcia and put the tying run aboard for Jimenez.
With a 3-2 count and two outs, Jimenez clocked a line drive to left center that reached the wall and allowed Higgins to score from first to tie the game and force extras.
The Woodies left a go-ahead run on third in the tenth with Carlos Arroyo , but turned to Ferguson again for the bottom half. He struck out Hodges to open the inning, but a 1-1 pitch to Rose was the final pitch of the game and his ninth home run of the year.
Game four of the series is at 7:05 on Saturday night. Jonathan Hernández will also make his Wood Ducks debut and he will be countered by Thomas Hatch. You can listen to every pitch live on Sports/Talk 960 The Bull or streamed live on the TuneIn Radio app.
