Mankato, Minn. – The MoonDogs six game winning streak came to an end on Tuesday night, as the Willmar Stingers lineup had a few big innings off of Nathan Hickey.
Stingers lead-off batter, Matt Rudick reached base with a walk and came around to score Willmar’s first run when Eli Wilson grounded into a fielders choice to make the second out.
In the third inning, Rudick drew his second lead-off walk of the game. Nic Hernandez then singled to center field to make it runners on first and second with no outs. Both runners advanced a base off a pass ball. Eli Wilson singled to left field and scored Rudick for the Stingers second run. Hernandez scored on a John Trousdale sacrifice fly to put the Stingers up 3-0.
Willmar took a commanding lead in the fourth inning as they sent 12 batters to the plate and scored six runs. Joey Ortiz started the inning off with a hit-by-pitch, and then the Stingers had five consecutive singles that drove in four of the six runs.
Mankato fired back in the bottom of the fourth with five runs of their own. In the inning, Jake Shepski, Kyle MacDonald, and CJ Huntley had RBI singles. Sean Noel came up with a big two-RBI single to pull the MoonDogs within four runs of the lead.
The MoonDogs would threaten a few times, having runners in scoring position in every inning following the fourth, but failed to come up with anymore runs.
The MoonDogs will play Willmar for game two tomorrow at The Frank. Brett Newberg is expected take the mound for Mankato, and first pitch will be at 7:05 pm.
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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.
