Mankato, Minn. – The St. Cloud Rox ended the MoonDog’s streak of six straight wins at The Frank tonight. The last time the MoonDogs lost a game at home was Thursday, May 29th which was also against the St. Cloud Rox in a 5-4 loss.
Nathan Hickey (Tarleton) got into trouble early as Gus Steiger (South Dakota State) drew a walk to lead off the game, and eventually scored on a sacrifice fly from Rox first baseman, Bobby Seymour (Wake Forest). Hickey got out of first inning jam only surrendering one run.
Hickey ran into trouble again in the third inning when he allowed the first batter to reach base for the third straight inning. Rox third baseman, Landon Stephens (Miami-Ohio) hit a two-run home run over the left field fence.
Blaze Glenn (Youngstown State) scored Mankato’s first, and only run of the game in the bottom of the fourth inning off of a Evan Klugerman (Bucknell) ground ball to the Rox shortstop.
Jacob Nagel (Bellarmine) replaced Hickey in the fifth inning and pitch four and two-thirds innings for the Dogs and only allowed two hits. Geremy Guerrero (Indiana State) came in to get the final out in the top of the ninth for the MoonDogs.
Glenn would reach base off of a hit by pitch to lead off the bottom of the ninth, but the MoonDogs failed to drive him and an extra run in to tie up the ball game.
The MoonDogs will head to St. Cloud tomorrow to play the Rox. First pitch will be at 7:05 pm and we can expect Adam Lukas to take the mound for Mankato.
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The Mankato MoonDogs are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. Now in its 25th anniversary season, the Northwoods 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 190 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 https://northwoodsleague.com/mankato-moondogs/ or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the MoonDogs as your favorite team.
