The Rochester Honkers began a 5-day road trip on Monday with a 3-2 win in Thunder Bay over the Boarder Cats to improve to 5-2 on the season.
The tone for Rochester was set early when Ryan Wrobleski (Dallas Baptist) homered over the wall in left field to give the Honkers a 1-0 lead.
The game would stay that way until the fourth inning when Wrobleski put himself into scoring position by leading off the inning with a double. He would advance to third on a sac-fly by Mitchell Allen (New Mexico State) and then later score off the bat of Brennan Schmitt (UW-La Crosse) to increase the Rochester lead to 2-0.
In the seventh inning, Evan Berkey (Cal-State Bakersfield) would come up with an important infield hit with two outs that would score Joey Daini (Sacramento City) to then make it a 3-0 game.
That run would prove to be important when Tyson Fisher (Dixie State) hit a two-run home run that would pull Thunder Bay within a run at 3-2. But that is as close as they would get as Marty Tolson Jr. (Maryland-Eastern Shore) would go on to shut down the Border Cats from there as he would strike out three of the final five Thunder Bay hitters to end the game. He earned his second save of the season by preserving the 3-2 win.
The story in this one however, was the fantastic start by Ryan Middendorf (Lake Erie) on the mound. He tossed seven innings of shutout baseball while allowing just five hits and one walk with eight strikeouts. Middendorf is now 1-0 on the season and has helped lead the Honkers to their third straight win over Thunder Bay.
The Honkers will continue their four-game series with the Border Cats on Tuesday night as they’ll meet at Port Arthur Stadium again with first pitch set for 6:05 CT.
