Miners Ride Lopez, Early Offense to Victory
July 25, 2015 - Frontier League (FL)
Southern Illinois Miners News Release
Marion, Ill. - The Southern Illinois Miners received another dominant outing from their starter, this time from Adam Lopez, and scored one run in each of the first three innings while weathering a seventh-inning rally to win 3-2 on Saturday night over the Florence Freedom at UC Health Stadium.
The Miners jumped on top of Florence starter Patrick McGrath (0-1), who was making his pro debut, in the first when Michael Earley homered the opposite way to right field on the eighth pitch of his at-bat for a 1-0 Miners lead. In the second inning, Brian Portelli reached on a two-base error by right fielder Collins Cuthrell and later scored on an RBI fielder's choice by Adrian English to make it 2-0 before a sacrifice fly by Steve Marino in the third gave Southern Illinois a three-run cushion.
Lopez (8-0) started out his outing by surrendering a ground-rule double to Florence's Daniel Fraga, but gave up no hits the rest of the time he was on the mound. The right-hander set the tone early by recording five of his first six outs on strikeouts, finishing with a season-high nine that also tied his career-high over six innings of shutout baseball, walking four and allowing just the lone hit to remain unbeaten on the season.
Florence mounted a two-out rally in the seventh against Pete Perez on two walks plus an RBI double by Steve Carrillo in the frame that made it 3-2, but Evan Mott came in and recorded the final out to keep the Miners in the lead. Mott then struck out the side in the eighth before Eric Green notched his second save with a 1-2-3 ninth thanks to some help from his defense. After catching the first two hitters in the ninth looking at strike three, Travis Weaver sent a long fly ball to the left field corner and was robbed of extra bases by Portelli, who made a game-ending leaping catch.
The Miners evened the series at one game apiece and forced a rubber match on Sunday evening at 5:05 p.m. CT Jarett Miller will take the ball for the Miners against Florence right-hander Coleman Stephens as the Miners look to win an eleventh consecutive road series.
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