SAUGET – The Gateway Grizzlies had a 3-0 lead slip away on a homer in the top of the eighth inning on Sunday night against the Evansville Otters, but regained it for good on a two-run home run by Kevin Krause in the bottom of the inning in a 5-3 victory at Grizzlies Ballpark, giving the home team an enormous series win.
Prior to the late dramatics, the story of the game was Gateway starter Deylen Miley. After stranding runners at second and third base in the top of the first, the Grizzlie right-hander played the role of stopper, retiring 13 batters in a row spanning the first through fifth innings. The Frontier League’s leader in strikeouts fanned eight batters to bring his total to 132 on the season, and pitched a career-high seven and one-third innings to allow the Grizzlies to build an early lead.
In the bottom of the third inning on offense, Edwin Mateo led off against Chip Korbacher with a double, went to third on a grounder to first base, and scored when Abdiel Diaz reached on an error by the pitcher for a 1-0 Gateway lead. After Kyle Gaedele singled Diaz to third base, Peter Zimmermann came through with a sacrifice fly to right field, doubling the lead to 2-0. In the bottom of the fourth, the lead swelled to 3-0 when Tyler Shelnut hit his first professional home run, a solo shot off the left field foul pole.
Miley continued to hold the line until the eighth inning, when he departed with a runner on first and one out following his final strikeout of the day. Matt Hickey (4-2) was summoned from the bullpen, and he got Gary Mattis to pop a pitch up down the right field line that dropped in between Zimmermann, Gaedele, and Gabe Holt just fair for a double. Dakota Phillips would make the Grizzlies pay for the non-catch, blasting a game-tying three-run home run to right field to knot the score up at 3-3.
But the Grizzlies had an answer. Evansville right-hander Jon Beymer (4-2) walked Zimmermann to lead off the bottom of the inning, and against rookie left-hander Grif Hughes, Krause got into a 3-1 count before blasting a two-run, go-ahead home run over the left field fence, putting the Grizzlies back in the lead at 5-3. That set up Leoni De La Cruz in the ninth inning, and after a leadoff single, the flamethrowing southpaw got a flyout to center field and a strikeout for the first two outs of the frame.
De La Cruz would bend further, hitting Giovanni DiGiacomo with a pitch to put the tying runs on base, and then balking the runners into scoring position. But the former Otter bore down again from there, striking out ex-teammate David Mendham looking on a slider, ending the game with his tenth save as a Grizzlie and giving Gateway the huge rubber-game victory.
Grizzlies Drop Middle Game To Evansville
The Gateway Grizzlies fell behind early on Saturday night against the Evansville Otters, and despite hitting three home runs in the contest, they were unable to make a dent in the deficit in a 15-3 loss at Grizzlies Ballpark.
Two-out RBIs killed Gateway’s pitching staff all game long, beginning in the first inning, when Aaron Dona (0-1) surrendered an RBI single to Mason White to put the Otters up 1-0. In the second inning, with the score already 2-0 after an RBI single by Giovanni DiGiacomo, Dona issued a walk and hit batter with two outs to load the bases before giving up a grand slam to Randy Bednar, making the deficit 6-0.
Kevin Krause would get Gateway on the board with a solo home run in the bottom of the second off Otters starter Casey Delgado (2-0), making the score 6-1, but the Otters would keep on scoring in bunches in the contest, plating five more runs in the top of the fourth (four of which with two outs on RBI hits by Delvin Zinn and Logan Brown on back-to-back pitches by Tyler Cornett), and then four more runs in the top of the seventh inning to complete their 15-run ledger.
Peter Zimmermann would get Gateway back on the board in the bottom of the sixth and eighth innings with solo home runs off Ryan Wiltse and Jacob Meyer, respectively, marking his 15th and 16th homers of the season as well as his eighth-career multi-home run game, but it was not enough to stem the tide as the Grizzlies dropped the middle game of the weekend series.
Gateway will look to respond quickly in the rubber game of the weekend on Sunday, August 11, at 5:30 p.m. CT, with Deylen Miley on the mound against Evansville’s Chip Korbacher at Grizzlies Ballpark.
Grizzlies Bounce Back, Walk Off Otters
The Gateway Grizzlies came back home on Friday night to take on the Evansville Otters for the first time in over two months, and in a low-scoring, tight pitcher’s duel, it was the home side who emerged victorious 4-3 on a walk-off sacrifice fly by Abdiel Diaz, delighting the 3,051 fans at Grizzlies Ballpark.
Both Grizzlies starter Lukas Veinbergs and Evansville starter Zach Smith brought their A-games to the yard. Smith struck out eight batters over six and two-thirds innings, while Veinbergs fanned five and walked just one while working into the eighth inning for Gateway, his longest start of the season and the second-longest for a Grizzlies pitcher this year.
Both men gave up just two runs in their outings, and it was the Grizzlies breaking the scoreless tie for the fourth straight game in the bottom of the fifth inning on a solo home run by Kyle Gaedele, giving Gateway a 1-0 lead on their first home run in the month of August, and ending a homerless drought of more than 300 team at-bats. That lead was short-lived, as J.J. Cruz smacked a solo home run to right field against Veinbergs in the top of the sixth, evening the score at 1-1.
Gateway would re-take the lead in the bottom of the seventh inning against Smith. D.J. Stewart reached base on a one-out infield single, with Gaedele following with a single to put the lead runner in scoring position. After a flyout for the second out of the frame, Smith walked Edwin Mateo, loading the bases, and Alex Valdez came in from the bullpen, tossing a wild pitch to score Stewart and make it 2-1 Gateway.
That lead, unfortunately, was also short-lived, as David Mendham led off the eighth inning with a triple that bounced over Mateo’s head in center field, and scored on another RBI hit by Cruz, this time a single, to tie the game at 2-2.
In the ninth, making his first appearance against his former team since being traded by the Otters in June, Leoni De La Cruz (1-1) struck out the side in order, and the game went to extras when the Grizzlies could not score the winning run against Evansville relief ace Michael McAvene (1-5).
In the tenth, Mendham’s RBI single scored the automatic runner in the International Tiebreaker to give Evansville their first lead of the night at 3-2, but De La Cruz bore down to limit the damage, stranding a pair of runners in scoring position. In the bottom half, Gabe Holt lasered a base hit to the right-center field gap that got all the way to the wall for an RBI triple, scoring Mateo to make it 3-3. That set up Diaz, who followed with the walk-off sacrifice fly to right field, winning the contest for the Grizzlies.
