SAUGET – The Gateway Grizzlies fell behind early on Thursday night against the Lake Erie Crushers, but rallied late, scoring a pair of runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to go ahead for good in a 4-2 victory at Grizzlies Ballpark, delivering Gateway a big home series win.
Things did not start well for Gateway or for starter Lukas Veinbergs (4-4), as his third pitch of the game was hit over the right field fence for a home run by Jarrod Watkins, giving Lake Erie a quick 1-0 lead. But Veinbergs settled in after that, retiring the next nine batters he faced and 14 of his next 15 overall. The Grizzlies’ offense got men on base in the early going as well against Lake Erie starter Jack Eisenbarger, but could not break through until the bottom of the fourth inning, when Dale Thomas hit an RBI single into left field to tie the score at 1-1.
It remained tied until the top of the sixth inning, when Lake Erie re-took the lead. After a leadoff walk and single, with the Grizzlies’ corner infielders crashing in for a bunt by Watkins, he instead swung away, and hit a ball off the glove of the drawn-in Peter Zimmermann that caromed to Gabe Holt at second base. He threw to Abdiel Diaz at the second base bag for the force-out, but Diaz’s throw to the recovering Zimmermann at first base got away for an error, allowing the lead runner John Tuccillo to score to make it 2-1 Crushers.
Veinbergs would bear down and strike out two to hold the Crushers to just the single run in the frame, and with one out in the bottom half, Cole Brannen stepped up and clubbed Eisenbarger’s first pitch over the right field wall for his fifth home run of the season and first since June 2, tying the game at 2-2.
Then, in the bottom of the seventh, Gateway pounced on the Crushers’ vaunted bullpen. Cal Carver (2-2) came in for Eisenbarger, and was greeted with an infield single by Victor Castillo, diving into first base to just beat Carver to the bag on a grounder to first baseman Scout Knotts. Diaz then walked, and Kevin Krause came through in the clutch, lasering a go-ahead, RBI automatic double down the left field line, making it 3-2 Gateway. After Zimmermann was intentionally walked and the Crushers brought Christian Scafidi in, Kyle Gaedele hit a long RBI single off the base of the right field wall to make the score 4-2.
The Grizzlies would not be able to add any more runs, but they would not need more. After rains came and forced a delay of one hour and five minutes, Matt Hickey tossed a scoreless eighth inning, and Leoni De La Cruz followed by nailing down his 11th save in as many opportunities as a Grizzlie with a scoreless ninth as Gateway regained a 3.0-game lead over the Crushers in the West Division standings with just 15 games remaining in the regular season.
The Grizzlies will look to keep the ball rolling when they head up to Chicagoland for their next series against the Windy City ThunderBolts, beginning Friday, August 16 at Ozinga Field. Alvery De Los Santos will get the starting nod for Gateway against Windy City southpaw Michael Barker, with first pitch scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CT.
