AA St. Paul Saints

Barreling Down the Tracks, Saints Take Down Railroaders 4-1

Published on June 1, 2018 under American Association (AA)
St. Paul Saints News Release


CLEBURNE, TX - The second leg of the St. Paul Saints three-city, 10-game roadtrip reached the halfway point on Friday night at The Depot at Cleburne Station. The Saints got another strong start from Vinny Nittoli, capitalized on two costly Cleburne Railroaders errors and came away with a 4-1 victory. The win improves the Saints to 10-4 on the season and 4-1 on their 10-game trip.

Nittoli, who had 16 strikeouts in his first two starts, came out firing in the first inning striking out the first two batters he faced. He struck out four through the first two and was rolling right along.

The Saints offense helped Nittoli by getting him all the runs he would need in the fourth thanks to two costly errors. With one out and one on Jayce Boyd hit a hot smash to the left of second baseman Trevor Sealy. He got a glove on it and the ball slid behind him into shallow right-center. It was initially ruled a hit, but changed to an error, and the Saints had runners at first and second. Dante Bichette Jr. then hit a grounder to third and Patrick Palmeiro's throw to second was right in the suns path and Sealey turned his head and the ball wound up in right field. Noah Perio Jr. scored on the play and Boyd went to third. With two outs Justin O'Conner walked to load the bases and Josh Allen came through with a two-run double off the glove of a leaping Palmeiro at third to give the Saints a 3-0 lead.

Nittoli ran into trouble in the sixth when he gave up a leadoff double to Sealey. K.C. Huth singled to right that put runners at the corners. Cameron Monger then walked to load the bases with nobody out. Nittoli, however, made the biggest pitch of the night and got a ground ball double play off the bat of Angelo Gumbs, who was 2-2 up to that point, that scored a run to make it 3-1. After hitting a batter, Nittoli got out of the jam by striking out Palmeiro to end the inning. Nittoli went 6.0 innings allowing one run on five hits while walking one and striking out eight.

The Saints tacked on an insurance run in the ninth when Allen led off with a walk, moved to second on a groundout and scored on a Brady Shoemaker double.

Mike Devine worked 2.0 scoreless innings and Tom Wilhelmsen earned his third save of the season with a perfect ninth.

The same two teams meet in game two of the three game series on Saturday night at 7:06 p.m. The Saints are TBA and the Railroaders send RHP Jared Mortensen (0-1, 3.21). The game can be heard on Alt 93.3 FM.

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