Blue Rocks Outlast BlueClaws In Extras

The Wilmington Blue Rocks defeated the Jersey Shore BlueClaws 4-3 on Saturday night after a late comeback in the tenth inning.

For the Rocks, Brad Lord would get the start and he was fantastic. Lord surrendered an unearned run in the top of the second after a single by Cole Moore was ripped into center field and an error by Daylen Lile allowed a run to come in.

The Rocks would come right back a couple of innings later to take the lead. A one-out single for Murphy Stehly got the line moving. Stehly would advance to second on a disengagement violation and would score to tie the game 1-1 on a Cortland Lawson two-out RBI single.

Matt Suggs followed Lawson’s RBI single with a walk and Sammy Infante would bring Lawson home on an RBI single of his own to make it a 2-1 game.

Lord would continue to mow down the Claws, forcing them into ground ball outs and not allowing any free bases. Lord would go 5.0 innings, allowing one run, unearned, on seven hits while striking out four and allowing no walks.

Things got shaky for the Rocks in the seventh as Jaren Zinn found himself in some trouble after allowing a leadoff single to Bryan Rincon. Zinn would then commit a throwing error on a pickoff attempt which allowed Rincon to advance to second and then would throw a wild pitch, advancing Rincon to third. After allowing a two-out walk, Zinn would be replaced by Holden Powell.

Powell would surrender a two-run double to Leandro Pineda to give the Claws the lead.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Rocks would come back to tie the game. A leadoff double by YoYo Morales would be followed up with an RBI double by Murphy Stehly to tie the game 3-3.

In the ninth, both teams would go down quietly and the game would go to extras.

In the tenth, the Claws would go down scoreless.

In the bottom half of the tenth, Morales would be the ghost runner for the Rocks to start the inning. He would move to third on a flyout by Stehly and an RBI single by Lawson would walk it off to give the Rocks the 4-3 lead.

The teams will be back at it tomorrow at 1:05 for the series finale.