WAUSAU, Wis. — The La Crosse Loggers would look to continue their momentum as they began a 4 game road trip starting with the Wisconsin Woodchucks on Thursday night. With the game starting 40 minutes late due to rain, both team were finally set to play at 7:15. Sadly, the momentum was quickly halted for the Loggers as the Woodchucks won 10-4.

Jayson Hibbard (Southern Idaho) would make his second start of the season. Much like his previous start against the Rockford Rivets, Hibbard’s command inside and outside the strike zone would evade him all night. Hibbard would finish the night allowing 7 runs (6 earned) over 3 innings pitched. A huge part of that was due to the Northwoods League Player of the night in Caleb Denny (Oral Roberts). Denny would hit two massive home runs off Hibbard in the 2nd and 4th innings.

Despite getting a combined 5 innings of work from Travis Weston (Boise State) and Ethan Bradford (Nebraska) out of the bullpen, the Loggers offense did not bring their ferociously hot bats into Athletic Park Thursday night. 

After scoring a combined 24 over their previous two games against the Booyah the Loggers were hoping to continue that trend against the team with the worst ERA in the Northwoods League in the Woodchucks (7.11 ERA). That would not be the story as Jace Baumann (Wisconsin-Stout) and Hunter Rosenbaum (West Virginia) combined for 7 shutout innings of 3 hit ball. Rosenbaum would go on to win Northwoods League Pitcher of the Night for his performance. 

The Loggers tried to make an interesting comeback in the 9th as they were able to score 4 runs all with 2 outs. JT Thompson (Texas State) hit his 2nd home run in back to back nights, to put the Loggers on the board. A couple of wild pitches and walked batters later and the Loggers were gift wrapped two runs before the game ended on an Andrew Meggs (Creighton) strikeout. 

La Crosse fell to 4-5 as the Woodchucks picked up their second victory as they moved to 2-6. Both teams will once again do battle Friday night at 6:35 PM CT. The game can be heard on Mixlr starting at 6:15 PM CT.