NYPL Vermont Lake Monsters

Expos defeat Yankees 5-4

July 25, 2005 - New York-Penn League (NYPL)
Vermont Lake Monsters News Release


STATEN ISLAND, NY --- Vermont's best players were just enough to beat the New York-Penn League's best team Monday night.

Dee Brown and John-Michael Howell each homered and Gene Yost tossed five strong innings as the Vermont Expos began a three-game series against the league-leading Staten Island Yankees with a 5-4 victory Monday night at the Richmond County Ballpark at St. George.

After Staten Island had taken a 2-0 lead with a pair of runs in the bottom of the third inning, Howell walked and Brown followed with a two-run homer to center to tie the game. It was Brown's team-leading fifth home run of the year.

Howell then gave the Expos a 3-2 lead in the fifth inning with a two-out solo home run to right field. The line drive homer was Howell's second home run of the season and first since June 25th (a span of 80 at bats).

Vermont increased that lead to 5-2 with another two runs in the sixth inning. With one out, the Expos got three straight singles from Drew McMillan, Mike Daniel and Leonard Davis (RBI) for a 4-2 advantage. After a balk moved Daniel to third and Davis to second, Andy Lane had an RBI groundout to short to score Daniel with Vermont's fifth run.

That run would prove important as Staten Island got a home run in the sixth from Ed Nunez off reliever Warmar Gomez and an unearned run in the seventh inning to cut the Vermont lead to 5-4.

Still 5-4 in the ninth, Neohmar Ochoa relieved Gomez and promptly got into trouble. Reegie Corona reached first leading off the inning on a Davis error at third and moved to second on a wild pitch. Ochoa then hit Tony Roth with a pitch. Yankee leadoff batter Brett Gardner bunted the runners into scoring position, putting the tying run on third and winning run on second with one out, but Ochoa got James Cooper to line out to right and struckout John Poterson to end the game.

Yost (4-1), who now has four of Vermont's nine wins on the season, allowed two runs on six hits over five innings. Gomes allowed two runs (one earned) on four hits over three innings, while Ochoa picked up his second save and just the second save of the year for Vermont.

Howell went 2-for-4 with two runs and his solo homer to raise his average to .363, while McMillan was 2-for-5. Poterson was 2-for-5 with two RBI and Corona 2-for-4 for Staten Island, while starter Toni Lara allowed two runs in 3.2 innings and reliever Erik Morrison (2-1) gave up Howell's homer to take the loss.

Vermont (9-25) and Staten Island (21-11) will play game two of the three-game series on Tuesday night and the series finale will be at 12:35 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.

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New York-Penn League Stories from July 25, 2005


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