MWL1 Bowling Green Hot Rods

Hot Rods Game Notes

Published on July 3, 2019 under Midwest League (MWL1)
Bowling Green Hot Rods News Release


Tonight's game will be the last of the series in Dayton as the Hot Rods return home to celebrate July 4th on Thursday at Bowling Green Ballpark against the Dragons.

About Last Night... Caleb Sampen tossed seven scoreless frames in the Bowling Green Hot Rods 3-0 shutout of the Dayton Dragons to open a four-game, home-at-home series that started at Fifth Third Field in Dayton, OH on Tuesday. The Hot Rods chased Dayton starter James Marinan in the third by scoring a pair of runs to take the lead. With one out, Ford Proctor doubled to right-center and Jonathan Aranda walked. Chris Betts walked to load the bases and Grant Witherspoon lifted a sacrifice fly to right against reliever Moises Nova, plating Proctor to give the Hot Rods a 1-0 lead while Aranda went to third on the play. Roberto Alvarez hit a ground ball through the right side of the infield to drive in Aranda and give Bowling Green a 2-0 advantage. Sampen continued to shut down the Dragons lineup, holding the home team to three hits. The righty used just 83 pitches to get through his seven innings of work, striking out seven (two-short of his career-high) while issuing one walk in the shutout. Aranda gave the Hot Rods an insurance run in the eighth against Dragons reliever Adrian Rodriguez with two outs. The lefty drove the second pitch of his at-bat over the right-center field wall to give the Hot Rods a 3-0 lead. The homer was Aranda's first of the season and helped propel Bowling Green to their eighth-straight win.

Second Half Savvy... The Hot Rods are off to a 10-2 start in the second half and are three-games up on Lake County in the Eastern Division. Part of the reason has been the Hot Rods pitching staff, who's posted a 1.97 ERA through the first 12 games of the half. The team has allowed 23 earned runs so far over 105 innings of work with 109 strikeouts. As impressive as the pitching has been, the BG offensive has done a good bit of work at the plate and on the bases, too. BG is batting .239 while outscoring their opponents 48-30 with the same number of hits (91). The team has out-homered their opponents as well, with nine blasts while swiping 15 bases. The offense ranks fourth in homers, third in walks, and third in stolen bases in the second half while falling 10th in average, ninth in runs, and eighth in OBP. The pitching staff ranks first in ERA, runs, earned runs, homers, and walks allowed.

Notes about the streak... Bowling Green has their longest win-streak of the season headed into Wednesday's contest against the Dragons and have put up some impressive stats over that span. Since June 25, the pitching staff owns a 1.52 ERA (best in the league) while holding opponents to 17 total runs (12 earned) with two homers. Opponents are batting .211 against BG pitching during the win-streak, while the Hot Rods are ninth in the league over that stretch, batting .248 themselves. The team's 34 runs in the win-streak are ninth in the MWL.

The season series... The Hot Rods enter Wednesday's game 7-2 against Dayton this season and 2-1 at Fifth Third Field. The Hot Rods are batting .335 against the Dragons with 10 homers, which is tied for the most hit against any opponent this season (the other being Great Lakes). BG has out-scored the Dragons 55-29 so far and take a whopping 23 more walks in the series while posting an OBP of .412 through the nine games played. The pitching staff has complimented the high-offensive output by holding Dayton to a .209 average with a 2.36 ERA. BG has struck out 93 Dragons over their 80 innings of work in the series as well. Grant Witherspoon has led the offense with a .452 batting average and is tied with Chris Betts for homers against Dayton with three. Ford Proctor hasn't homered in the series, but is batting .405 and has played in all nine games of the series and is the only Hot Rods player to do so this season.

Yesterday's Notes... Sampen threw seven innings for the fourth time this year... It's also his career-high and all four times have been during the 2019 season... It's the third time this year that Sampen has thrown seven innings without allowing a run... Sampen also logged his eighth quality start, which leads the team... Proctor had three hits for the sixth time this season... It was his 19th multi-hit game of the year... Pena had his second-straight multi-hit effort... It was his 12th of the year... He's also got a three-game hit streak... Alvarez had his 18th multi-hit game of 2019... Whalen's eight-game hit streak ended... He walked twice, so he has a nine-game on-base streak... Aranda extended his hit-streak to four games with his homer on Tuesday... Gregorio also has a four-game hit streak... BG's eight-game win streak is a new season-high... They're 12-5 in three-run games... The shutout was the Hot Rods seventh of the year... It was also their 40th win of the season against a right-handed starter... The team is 36-7 when they outhit their opponents...

Check out the Bowling Green Hot Rods Statistics

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Midwest League Stories from July 3, 2019


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