How hot are the Hillsboro Hops this season? Even one of the buses carrying Hops players and equipment to the field in Boise caught fire.The minor conflagration in the engine compartment proved to be nothing but a minor inconvenience as the Hops took over sole possession of first place in
How hot are the Hillsboro Hops this season? Even one of the buses carrying Hops players and equipment to the field in Boise caught fire.
The minor conflagration in the engine compartment proved to be nothing but a minor inconvenience as the Hops took over sole possession of first place in the Northwest League South Division.
The Hops collected 14 hits and took advantage of four Boise errors to defeat the Hawks 7-5 in the opening game of a three-game series at Memorial Stadium in Boise Friday night.
Hillsboro sent nine men to the plate in a four-run fourth inning, breaking a 2-2 tie to take a 6-2 lead. Boise committed three of its four errors in the frame and probably should have been charged with a few more.
Jorge Barrosa went 3-for-5 with a run scored and a run batted in to make a winner out of Michel Gelabert (4-1). The left hander from Havana, Cuba pitched four innings in relief of Drey Jameson, allowing six hits and two runs, one earned, with three strikeouts and one base on balls. Boise starting pitcher Zak Baayoun (0-4) took the loss, allowing nine hits and all six runs (five earned) in 3 2/3 innings.
Jameson, a first-round draft pick out of Ball State University, retired all three batters he faced in the first inning on ground outs to second base.
All 14 of the Hops hits were singles as they improved to 3-1 in the second half of the NWL season and 27-15 overall, staying tied with second-place Salem-Keizer (2-2) for the best overall record in the NWL.
Boise parlayed two hits and a passed ball into a pair of runs in the second inning before the Hops responded with two to tie in the top of the third. Back-to-back ground balls from Daniel Wasinger and Lyle Lin clanked off Boise gloves at second and third base. After RIcky Martinez was hit by Baayoun to load the bases with none out, Steven Leyton grounded into a double play as Wasinger scored from third. Jesus Marriaga followed with an RBI single to center field, plating Lin to tie the game.
In the fourth, Andy Yerzy beat the defensive shift with a single through the hole at second base with one out. Barrosa followed with a grounder to shortstop Jesus Azuaje, who threw wild to first, moving Yerzy to third base. With runners at the corners, David Garza, Jr. rifled a single through the hole on the left side to score Yerzy. Wasinger followed with an RBI single to score Barrosa. Then, with runners at the corners, the Hops pulled off a double steal for the second time in four second half games as Wasinger broke for second, drawing a one-hop throw from Boise catcher Bryan Quijada that skipped off Tovar's glove as Garza raced home, giving the Hops a 5-2 lead. After Lin flied out to center. Martinez hit a chopper over the mound that Tovar was unable to short-hop, Wasinger steaming home after the ball defelected off his glove as Martinez reached second with a headfirst slide. Tovar would boot another ball, literally, mishanlding then kicking Steven Leyton's slow roller to second before reliever Boby Johnson put a sloppy inning to bed by getting Marriaga to ground out to short.
Tovar's defensive nightmare wasn't over. Another error in the ninth inning on a ground ball by Yerzy allowed the Hops to plate an insurance run when Barrosa hit a two-out RBI single to right center, scoring Leyton, who had gone from first to third on the boner.
Gelabert escaped a bases-loaded jam in the fifth by getting UCLA slugger Michael Toglia, Colorado's top pick in the 2019 draft, to ground into a double play to close a scoreless fifth inning, But Boise jumped on reliever Jacob Stevens with back-to-back doubles from Daniel Cope and Yorvis Torrealba to lead off the sixth. Stevens responded by striking out the next two batters, but Azuaje sent a sharp ground ball to third that took a bad hop and ate up Martinez, ricocheting off his glove into left field as Torrealba raced home to make it 6-4 Hillsboro.
After a scoreless seventh inning, Boise mounted a threat in the eighth, drawing a pair of walks from Jake Polancic. Eduardo Herrera came out of the Hops pen and retired one of the league's leading hitters, Joe Aeilts, on a ground out to second to leave the tying runs on base. But Herrera buckled in the ninth. Going for his third straight save, the hard-throwing righty loaded the bases with one out on a pair of walks and Aaron Schunk's single to left, the first hit he had allowed to a NWL batter in 9 2/3 innings and only the second hit he had allowed in 11 appearances in 2019. After getting Torrealba to hit a foul fly out to right, Trevor Boone stepped to the plate, trying to avoid the indignity of a five strikeout night. Boone lashed an 0-1 pitch into left field for a base hit, moving the tying run to second and putting the potential winning run aboard.
Hops manager Javier Colina made his final call to the pen, summoning closer Bryan Menendez. The NWL leader in saves polished off his eight in nine attempts by striking out Quijada to end the game.
Boise finished with 12 hits, but left 12 runners on base and two unearned runs proved to be very costly in a two-run loss. Torrealba had two hits and two RBI with a runs scored. Cope reached base three times and scored twice and Schunk finished with three hits. Leyton (2-4, bb, run), Yerzy (2-4, run, hit by pitch), Martinez (1-3, bb, hit by pitch) and Barrosa each reached base three times in the win. Martinez extended his hitting streak to five games.
Game two of the series will be at 6:15 p.m. Saturday night. Pregame airtime on NBC Sports Northwest Rip City Radio 620 AM is at 6 p.m.
