VISALIA, CA - Even Manarino had been on a roll for Stockton since taking over for Norge Ruiz in the third inning, after Ruiz had been tossed for doctoring the baseball. When Manarino took over with the Ports trailing 1-0, the tenor of the game changed. Manarino set down 14
VISALIA, CA - Even Manarino had been on a roll for Stockton since taking over for Norge Ruiz in the third inning, after Ruiz had been tossed for doctoring the baseball. When Manarino took over with the Ports trailing 1-0, the tenor of the game changed. Manarino set down 14 men in a row, a season-high for the Ports, and took the streak into the eighth inning when he induced a first-pitch groundout from Daniel Lockhart. But Manarino, who had struggled since coming back to Stockton from Class-AA Midland, followed up the groundout by walking Matt Jones on four pitches. Then Visalia got luck to bounce into their court with the go-ahead run on base in a 1-1 tie.
Galli Cribbs Jr. followed the walk by hitting a seeing-eye grounder past the dives of both Sandber Pimmentel and Nate Mondou to move Jones to third. Matt McPhearson, who was hitless with a six-game hitting streak on the line, fell behind with two strikes before muscling a flare into center past a drawn-in infield that scored Jones to give the Rawhide the lead. Fernery Ozuna then singled home Cribbs and, after a wild pitch, Grant Heyman hit a deep sacrifice fly to left, scoring McPhearson and putting Visalia up 4-1. Austin Byler put the finishing touches on the inning by smashing a line-drive infield single in and out of the glove of Mikey White at third to give the Rawhide a four-run inning and a 5-1 lead.
Visalia (52-49/16-15) put up just seven hits after averaging double-digit hit totals for the past 13 games, but the offense kicked into gear at exactly the right time to make Manarino (L, 4-7) a hard-luck loser.
All of this came on a day where the Rawhide had reached into the bullpen for Nick Baker in a spot start. Baker worked with great pace and delivered arguably his best start of the year, allowing just one run on four hits in a season-best five innings with a pair of strikeouts and no walks. Baker's lone run allowed, and Stockton's (48-53/12-19) only run, came on a solo home run from Brett Siddal in the fourth inning. Siddal finished with three hits and was a triple shy of the cycle.
J.R. Bradley, Keegan Long, and Yoan López tossed four one-hit innings of relief, striking out six and walking none. Long (W, 2-1) pitched two perfect innings in the seventh and eighth and picked up the win for Visalia.
McPhearson extended his current hitting streak to seven games, which is coming on the heels of a 17-game hitting streak that ended on July 15. Visalia has now won the first game in each of their past three series and has won 11 of their past 14 games to bring them back into playoff contention in the California League North Division. With 39 games remaining, the Rawhide sit two games out of first in the second-half standings behind Modesto, who defeated San Jose this evening.
The Rawhide will continue the series against Stockton tomorrow night and will feature Visalia RHP Justin Donatella (6-8, 3.60) and Stockton RHP Angel Duno (7-6, 5.09). First pitch will be at 7:00 PM and tickets are available online at rawhidebaseball.com.
