Thunder Bay plays spoiler in game one
Duluth, Minn — After the Northwoods League ruled this afternoon that the Huskies would be stripped of 5 wins because of a roster violation, they came into tonight’s game against Thunder Bay 2nd in the division a half game behind Eau Claire and half a game ahead of La Crosse. Regardless, Duluth has played very good baseball lately, winning six of their last seven played games (5 of those wins were stripped). They looked to start a new win streak against the last place Thunder Bay Border Cats, who had won two out of their last four coming into tonight’s game
Tonight Keaton Carattini got his 2nd consecutive start on the mound after throwing four innings against Waterloo last week and giving up one run in a 6-2 win. He’d face off against DJ DePiero, who last faced Duluth on July 12th in a relief appearance and tossed three scoreless innings in an 11-8 Huskies win.
Both teams went hitless through the first two frames as Keaton Carattini flashed his stuff with 4 strikeouts through 6 batters faced. In fact, in the 2nd inning he worked the count full to all three batters but managed to strike each of them out on fastballs.
Thunder Bay got the first hit of the game in the bottom of the 3rd on a Noah Reed leadoff single, who would work his way to 3rd and then score on a Ryne Edmondson one-out bases-loaded single for the first run of the night. The bases got loaded after a walk to Nate Soriano and an error by Joey Zwak. Carattini managed to get out of the jam and limit the damage by getting Jakob Newton and Alexander Hernandez to whiff for the 2nd and 3rd outs, bringing his strikeout total to 6 after the first three innings.
Due to Carattini’s pitch count, he would not return for the 4th as Erik Kaiser took over on the bump. In Kaiser’s last appearance against Thunder Bay last Friday he pitched one inning and gave up two runs.
DJ DePiero took a no-hitter into the 5th inning and got the first two outs of the inning, but Nico Lima broke it up in a big way with a solo-shot just inside the left-field foul pole to tie the game. The Huskies scored the go-ahead run two innings later on a Drew Downing sac-fly that brought home Max Guzman to take a 2-1 lead before the break. DePiero ended up throwing two more innings before Jordan Jackson came in to pitch the 8th. He allowed two runs on four hits and struck out three in his start tonight.
Justin Moore came in to pitch the bottom of the 8th trying to retain the 2-1 lead, but a leadoff double from Newton and a single from Alexander Hernandez put runners on the corners with no outs. And Jordan Larson was able to score Thunder Bay’s 2nd run with a sac fly that scored Newton to send the game to the 9th inning tied at 2-2. Neither team could score in the 9th as game one went into extras.
The Huskies failed to score in their half of the 10th after Nico Lima, who was placed at 2nd to start the inning, was thrown out trying to steal 3rd for the first out. Jordan Jackson recorded the next two outs to give Thunder Bay their shot at winning. Ryne Edmondson wasted no time as he led off with a doubled that Anthony Galati scampered home on to walk it off.
The Huskies face off against Thunder Bay again tomorrow. First pitch is set for 1:35 pm with live game coverage on 92.1 The Fan and twinportssportshub.com beginning at 1:25 pm. All Duluth Huskies and Northwoods League games are live streamed online at portal.stretchlive.com/nwl to watch.
Be sure to follow the Duluth Huskies on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat all season long. Check out duluthhuskies.com for tickets to upcoming games. For more in-depth news on the Huskies, be sure to follow @XtraInningsWithRyne and @JoeChatzHuskies on Facebook.
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The Duluth Huskies are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. Now in its 26th anniversary season, the Northwoods League is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 22 teams, drawing significantly more fans, in a friendly ballpark experience, than any league of its kind. A valuable training ground for coaches, umpires and front office staff, more than 200 former Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (WAS), two-time World Series Champions Ben Zobrist (CHC) and Brandon Crawford (SFG) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (BOS), Jordan Zimmermann (DET) and Curtis Granderson (TOR). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League portal. For more information, visit www.duluthhuskies.com or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the Huskies as your favorite team.
