Mequon, WI-The Lakeshore Chinooks fell to the Madison Mallards 10-0 on Friday night. The loss dropped the Chinooks to 24-21 on the season and 6-4 in the second half.
The star of the night was the Mallards’ Simon Rosenblum-Larson. On the season, the Madison native and Harvard Crimson has a 1.06 ERA through 42.1 innings and hasn't given up more than one earned run in any of his eight starts.
Tonight was much of the same. He threw five innings, allowed one hit, walked two and struck out nine for his second win of the season.
But, the best way to detail the dominance of Rosenblum-Larson, who Mallards fans affectionately call SRL, is to talk about the Chinooks offense.
Coming into this game, the Chinooks averaged ten runs per game over their last 11 games, and put up impressive totals of 21, 16 and 16. Granted, Matthew Mika and Owen Miller, both bigs parts of that success, weren't in the lineup, but other staples Nick Gatewood, Rylan Thomas and Jacob Richardson were all held hitless.
SRL made this lineup, which is statistically the best in the Northwoods League, look like an extremely average group.
This was also the first time that the Chinooks had been shut out since June 17th and only the third time they’d been shut out all season. Interestingly, they were shut out on back to back days, June 16th and 17th.
In relief, Matt McCarty threw four more shutout innings, gave up only one hit and struck out four. That performance earned him his first save of the season. If you didn’t know, a reliever throwing four or more innings in a game and finishing that game qualifies him for a save based on the official scorer's digression.
The only offense of the night from Lakeshore came off the bat of Joe Duncan. In the first inning, Duncan laced a line-drive single to left—the only thing that kept SRL from a no-hit bid—but was picked off of first base just three pitchers later.
Then, in the bottom of the ninth inning, Duncan came through with his second, and the team's second hit of the game with a triple that he crushed into the left-center field gap.
As for the Chinook pitching, starter Alex McIntosh struggled through his 2.2 innings. He gave up seven hits, six runs, walked one, and struck out one.
This was McIntosh’s first start of the season. The lefty had been used in a relief role up to this point and sported a solid 4.02 ERA through his 15.1 innings pitched.
For his career with the UWM Panthers, McIntosh, who was hurt in 2016, started five games in 2015 and had a 4.33 ERA over those games.
Overall, he was pretty up and down as a starter. In one start, he threw seven no-hit innings and was part of the first ever no-hitter in UWM history, and in another start, he gave up five earned runs without recording an out
It remains to see if McIntosh will be used as a starter in the future, but he has the capability if it’s necessary.
The only other news of the night was the debut of fellow UWM panther, Josh Serio. The Greenfield, WI native threw one inning, gave up three hits and one earned run.
“I loved [my debut],” Serio said. “The fans are awesome, gotta get the first time going live out of the way. Got the shakes a little bit, but I loved it.”
The Chinooks are back underway tomorrow at Kapco Park where they’ll welcome in the Green Bay Bullfrogs for the first of a two-game home and home series before the All-Star break on July 16th. Austin Havekost is tomorrow’s slated starter.
The Lakeshore Chinooks are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. The 23-year-old summer collegiate league is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 20 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 180 former Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including two-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (WAS), two-time World Series Champion Ben Zobrist (CHC) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (BOS), Jordan Zimmermann (DET), Curtis Granderson (NYM) and Lucas Duda (NYM). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League portal. For more information, visit www.lakeshorechinooks.com or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the Chinooks as your favorite team.
