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AA St. Paul Saints

Pitching Dominates Again as Saints Win Sixth Straight at Home 3-1 over AirHogs

July 27, 2018 - American Association (AA)
St. Paul Saints News Release


ST. PAUL, MN - The St. Paul Saints are finally showing the rest of the league they have the best home field advantage in the American Association. They got a solid starting pitching performance from Trevor Foss and capitalized on three errors in the eighth inning to defeat the Texas AirHogs 3-1 on Friday night at CHS Field in front of the second largest crowd of the season, 9,258. The win improves the Saints to 36-28 and was their sixth consecutive win at home and third straight win overall.

Foss gave up a leadoff single to Casio Grider in the first, but got a strike out, caught stealing double play and then fanned Correlle Prime to end the inning.

Foss ran into a little trouble in the second when he walked Stewart Ijames. After Ijames moved to second on a ground out, Foss unleashed a wild pitch sending Ijames to third. Foss walked Chen Jupeng, but struck out Chen Chen and Luan ChenChen to end the inning.

The lone run Foss allowed came in the third when Dillon Thomas singled with two outs. He advanced to second on a passed ball and scored on a single by Prime giving the AirHogs a 1-0 lead.

The Saints tied the game up in the bottom of the inning when Kyle Barrett walked with two outs, stole second and scored on Burt Reynolds' RBI single.

From the fourth through the seventh Foss allowed just two hits, but in the eighth, with the score tied at one, he gave up a one out single to Thomas. After getting Prime to fly out to left, Foss departed for the lefty Ken Frosch who came in to face the left-hand hitting Ijames. Frosch got Ijames to fly out to right to end the inning. Frosch extended his season long scoreless streak to 26.1 innings, second all-time in franchise history behind Caleb Thielbar's 29.2 in 2011. Foss went 7.2 innings allowing one unearned run on seven hits while walking two and striking out six.

In the bottom of the eight the Saints capitalized on three errors from two plays. Reynolds led off by reaching on a throwing error by the shortstop Yang Jin. Reliever Lu Yusong tried to pick off Reynolds, but threw the ball away. Reynolds raced all the way around to third. The throw from first baseman Chu Fujia went to the plate and skipped over the catcher Luan Chenchen's glove and to the backstop allowing Reynolds to score making it 2-1. With two outs Yusong walked three consecutive batters and, with the bases loaded and two outs, hit Justin O'Conner to force in a run, giving the Saints a two run lead.

In the ninth Mike Devine locked down his fourth save of the season by pitching a perfect inning while striking out two. Devine extended his scoreless string to 17.2 innings.

The same two teams meet Saturday night at CHS Field in game two of the three game series at 7:05 p.m. The Saints send RHP Jake Matthys (5-4, 3.09) to the mound against AirHogs LHP Tyler Matzek (2-6, 5.76). It is Superhero Night presented by Hamline University. The game can be seen on the Saints Cable Network, cable access channels in and around the Twin Cities area, and heard on Alt 93.3 FM.

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