IL1 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders

SWB Game Notes

Published on June 8, 2019 under International League (IL1)
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders News Release


SYRACUSE METS (30-30) @ SCRANTON/WILKES-BARRE RAILRIDERS (33-25)

RHP Walker Lockett (0-0, 3.00) vs. RHP Brody Koerner (2-0, 4.09)

| Game No. 59 | PNC Field | Moosic, PA | June 8, 2019 | First Pitch 4:05 p.m. |

MOOSIC, PA -- Randall Delgado retired the final 19 batters he faced and was masterful on the mound, but the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders fell to the Syracuse Mets 3-1 on Friday night at PNC Field.

Syracuse jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first when Matt Kemp connected for a two-run home run to the bullpen in left center. Delgado settled down after the blast, and did not allow another baserunner for the rest of his outing. He lasted 7.0 innings, allowing just two runs on one hit, walking one and striking out four, while turning in his second quality start in three games with the RailRiders. Overall, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre has enjoyed four consecutive quality starts from its lid lifters.

The RailRiders were held scoreless Mets right-hander Chris Flexen, with a big assist from a triple play turned by Syracuse in the bottom of the fourth. SWB finally broke through in the fifth when Trey Amburgey crushed a solo home run to center to cut the deficit to 2-1.

Rex Brothers tossed a 1-2-3 top of the eighth for the RailRiders in back of Delgado, but Joe Harvey ran into some trouble in the ninth. The righty allowed a one-out single to Ruben Tejada and a double to Luis Guillorme to plate a run and expand Syracuse's advantage to 3-1. The run-scoring sequence disrupted a streak of 23 consecutive Mets batters retired by RailRiders pitchers. The Baby Bombers threatened in the bottom of the ninth, bringing the tying run to the plate with two outs, but Paul Sewald was able to escape without any damage to close out the contest for the Mets.

ALL TOO FAMILIAR: Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Syracuse last played one another two weekends ago, over Memorial Day Weekend. Sunday- the third game of that four-game series- Mike Ford homered off Arquimedes Caminero in the 7th inning and Caminero threw at the next batter, Breyvic Valera, and hit him in the back of his right shoulder. Benches cleared, and Caminero, INF Logan Morrison (SWB) and INF Danny Espinosa were all ejected. The following night, Ford led off the 9th inning against Caminero with a four-run deficit and the first pitch sailed over his head to the backstop and Caminero was ejected again. Benches cleared, but no shoving occurred. For the two days worth of incidents, Morrison and Espinosa received three-game suspensions and Caminero received a seven-game suspension. Two weeks later he has not been taken off the restricted list by the Mets.

EXTRA OFFENSE: SWB has had plenty of offensive success against the Syracuse Mets this season, using strong hitting to win 7 of the first 9 games of the year head-to-head entering this weekend's series. As they welcome their IL North Division rival to town for four games over three days, they look to keep those hot bats going. On the season entering Friday, the RailRiders are leading the IL with a .276 AVG this season and is second in both OBP (.355) and SLG (.488). In 9G against Syracuse, the team is slashing .322/.396/.596 in a big uptick in performance over what they've done against other teams in the league.

DOUBLEDIPPING: By June 5th of last year, the RailRiders had played just two doubleheaders and finished the year playing two games on the same date eight times over the course of the entire season. Wednesday's doubleheader was the sixth time in the first 56 games of the year that the RailRiders would have played multiple games on the same day, with a seventh doubleheader set for Sunday vs Syracuse. There are three more doubleheaders on the schedule in the coming weeks, and the RailRiders are expecting to have played nine doubleheaders over the first 87 games of the year -- exceeding their total from all of 2018 just over halfway into the year.

ALL (GOOD?) THINGS COME TO AN END: The RailRiders hit the weekend with a series against the Mets wrapping up a gauntlet stretch of games. Early in the season, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders had their schedule broken up by a handful of postponements and suspensions due to weather -- seven over the first five weeks of the season. Though many of the games were made up the following day, they had a number postponed a few weeks. Following the day-off May 20th, the RailRiders began a stretch on the 21st against the Pawtucket Red Sox that featured 23 games over 20 days before their next scheduled off day with all 23 games having come against each of their five IL North Division rivals. They are currently 12-7 on this run of games, with one game against Rochester postponed until July 5th due to weather.

WHAT A NIGHT: The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders tossed a pair of shutouts Wednesday night, with Chance Adams, Nestor Cortes and J.P. Feyereisen facing just three batters over the minimum while recording 42 outs. It was the first time the RailRiders posted a full doubleheader of shutout baseball since 7/2/2011 @ Pawtucket. That day, DJ Mitchell tossed seven innings of one-hit ball to outduel Brandon Duckworth in Game 1, 7-0. In the second game, Pawtucket managed three hits off George Kontos, Logan Kensing and Randy Flores in a 3-0 loss. A year ago they were shutout in a pair of games by Lehigh Valley in which Enyel De Los Santos and Brandon Liebrandt shut down the RailRiders April 29.

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