Newport Snaps Keene's 9-Game Win Streak with 6-3 Victory
July 22, 2013 - New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL)
Newport Gulls News Release
NEWPORT, R.I. - The Newport Gulls snapped the Keene Swamp Bats' nine-game win-streak on Monday night with a 6-3 win at home in a battle of first-place teams. Tyler Ferguson picked up the win for Newport in his fourth start - his second victory of the season - allowing only two runs on five hits.
The Keene Swamp Bats put themselves on the board first in the top of the first, inning capitalizing on Ferguson's early control trouble from the hill. Eric Gutierrez hit a 3-0, two-out fastball in a towering shot off the left-field wall to bring home Matt Ford from second to make the score 1-0 Swamp Bats.
The flock would answer in the third, seizing opportunities on Swamp Bat errors in the infield in the bottom of the third. Keene's starting pitcher Brian Hunter ran into some trouble out of the gate in the third as he put the first two Gulls batters on bases on balls to set up Newport to threaten early with no outs.
Cody Jones, living up to his title of the fastest man in the NECBL, got a big jump off of second to slide into third, but the throw from Jonathan Scott to Matt Ford to try and pick up the tag would be off the mark into left-field, allowing him to score easily from third, to make things tied at one apiece.
Fielding miscues continued for Keene in the ensuing batter as Adrian English, would earn an infield hit on an error by Zach Lucas as he bobbled the hit on a routine ground ball allowing Trace Tam Sing to score from third to put Newport on top for the first time in the contest, 2-1.
However, they would not hold on to their lead for long, as Lucas would avenge his error with a solo shot over the left-field fence to knot things back up, now two runs each.
English earned an RBI in the fifth, as he slapped a pitch into the opposite field to easily score Tam Sing from third with one-out. Ty Moore put his second multi-hit game in the last four contests in the books, as he picked up an opposite field hit himself to pick up a 2 RBI single. Ben Roberts would string together the Gulls fifth straight hit of the fifth inning with a worm burner up the middle into shallow center-field to make it 6-2 Gulls.
The Keene Swamp Bats would find a little more life in their bats in the eighth inning when a Daniel Nichols RBI double would cut the Newport lead to three. However, that would be all that Keene would pull together in their rallying effort.
Kyle McGrath picked up the save for Newport. He shut the door on the Swamp Bats allowing just one run on three hits with six strikeouts in four innings of work.
With the win, the Newport Gulls improve to 23-10, while Keene drops to 20-14. Newport, which now has a 3=C21/2 game lead over the Ocean State Waves in the NECBL East, heads to Vermont early tomorrow for a double-header against the Vermont Mountaineers. Dave Hickey (0-0, 1.35 ERA) will work on the mound against All-Star Brett Graves (4-0, 0.61 ERA) of Newport in the first of a pair of sevens. Just the start of a three-game road trip, the Gulls head to Sanford Wednesday and Plymouth Thursday before returning home to face the Sanford Mainers at Cardines Field on Friday.
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New England Collegiate Baseball League Stories from July 22, 2013
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