Louisville Bats Notes: May 18

TONIGHT'S GAME: The Louisville Bats and Norfolk Tides begin a three-game series Friday night at Harbor Park. Louisville will look to avoid tying its season-long 6-game losing streak tonight, also attempting to snap its 9-game losing streak on the road. The Bats will turn to their Opening Day starter, right-hander Robert Stephenson , who is coming off back-to-back quality starts.

AGAINST NORFOLK: The Bats and Tides met just 12 days ago at Harbor Park, with the top farm club of the Baltimore Orioles sweeping the Bats in four games from May 3-6, outscoring the Bats, 21-13. It's the second season in a row that Louisville will play Norfolk on the road for seven, and visit Louisville Slugger Field for three games. Last season, Norfolk took the season series 6-4, outscoring Louisville by a 44-33 advantage.
COMING OFF THE QUASI-DOUBLEHEADER: On Thursday, the Bats and Durham Bulls played two games, finishing out a rain-suspended game that was originally started Wednesday, and playing a scheduled seven-inning game afterwards. LOU dropped both contests, 6-4 and 4-1, respectively. In the first game, the Bats did their best to fight back from down 6-0 after starter Brandon Finnegan gave up three runs on Wednesday and reliever Zach Neal gave up three when play resumed Thursday.
- In the second game, second baseman Dilson Herrera blasted his second home run of the season for Louisville in the top of the first inning, but LOU starter Cody Reed would surrender four runs in the bottom of the first, which would be all the scoring the Bulls would need in a 4-1 final, completing the three-game sweep of the Bats, who currently hold the lowest winning percentage in the IL (.333).
TRANSACTIONS: The Cincinnati Reds announced Thursday that infielder Cliff Pennington was granted his released and has entered free agency. The veteran batted .267 (8-for-30) with 4 runs, 2 doubles and one RBI in 11 games for Louisville, after starting the season on the Reds' Opening Day roster.
16 K's: Louisville's pitching staff combined for a season-high 16 strikeouts May 16 against Durham, easily surpassing its previous season-best 10 strikeouts, achieved 8 different times and most recently on May 8 vs. Indianapolis. The 16 K's were the most by LOU pitching since August 9, 2017, when the Bats struck out 19, also in a road game against the Durham Bulls. Left-hander Brandon Finnegan (6), right-hander Zach Neal (6), left-hander Kyle Crockett (2) and right-hander Kevin Shackelford (2) combined for the 16 whiffs of the Bulls in the 6-4 loss. Neal became the first LOU pitcher to strike out 6+ batters out of the bullpen since right-hander Luke Farrell struck out six Columbus Clippers on September 3 last season in game one of a doubleheader.
ROAD LOSING STREAK: The Bats last won a road game on April 27, in the series opener of a three-gamer at Toledo. Louisville has lost 9 straight road games for the first time since August 8-19, 2013, losing 9 straight games away from LSF against Columbus (8/8-8/9), Pawtucket (8/13-8/16) and Rochester (8/17-8/19). With a loss tonight, the Bats will have dropped 10 straight on the road for the first time since they lost 11 straight road tilts from August 11-25, 2012 against Gwinnett (8/11-8/13), Charlotte (8/14-8/17), Indianapolis (8/22-8/24) and Toledo (8/25).
(SCORING) FIRST IS THE WORST & A TIDE-Y TIE-IN: The Bats lost a game in which they scored first for the 13th time this season, falling to a league-worst 6-13 (.316) this season when scoring first in a ballgame. Louisville actually has more come-from-behind wins (7) than it has wins when scoring first (6) in 2018. Last season, LOU had the worst record in the IL when scoring first, finishing 38-27 (.585). Interestingly, the last IL club to finish a season under the .500 mark when scoring first were the Norfolk Tides in 2011, going 32-35 (.478) when scoring first.
HACK DILSON: Louisville second baseman Dilson Herrera homered in last night's ballgame, his second for the Bats in 2018. In 11 starts for Louisville this season, Herrera has reached base safely in 10 of them. Each of his 2 home runs this season with Class A Daytona came in the first inning, with 3 of his 4 homers on the year coming in the first inning.