Valleycats wake and rake
Culver homers twice in win; Strawberry to toss first pitch Thursday
TROY — After a powerful rally came up just short Tuesday night, the Tri-city Valleycats returned to Joseph L. Bruno Stadium about 12 hours later on Wednesday morning and just kept swinging.
Cito Culver hit two homers and Juan Montes added a tworun blast to support pitcher Rafi Vazquez’s seven-inning start as the Valleycats beat the Troisrivieres Aigles 9-2 in front of an Education Day crowd of 3,757 comprised of local students. First pitch was at 10:21 a.m. following the Valleycats’ 12-11 loss on Tuesday night when Tri-city nearly came all the way back from a 10-0 deficit.
“You never get used to these, 10 ‘clock in the morning,” Valleycats manager Pete Incaviglia said. “One o’clock games are fine, but those 10 o’clock in the morning games, man, just kind of throw a wrench in your routine. I was proud of our guys. We came back, played well, got some guys starting to swing the bat a little bit. I think we’re going to be fine.”
The Valleycats improved to 8-9 entering Thursday’s series finale.
Montes had the Valleycats’ first hit on Wednesday, a homer to left-center that made it 2-0 in the second inning.
“I just think we’re hitting a lot better, we’re feeling a lot more like a team, a lot more like family,” Montes said. “Road trips help in that sense. We’re at home and I think we’re building up and feeling better as a team and we’re going to starting hitting a lot more like we’ve been doing the past few games.”
Montes, a native of Guatemala who also has Nicaraguan citizenship, said he likes the early start because it reminds him of weekend doubleheaders back home. The Valleycats played three straight morning starts at Windy City last week.
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“Kind of used to waking up early and being ready early and all that stuff,” he said. “Always ready to play.”
Culver had his first multihomer game in independent ball. He most recently hit two homers in a game when he was playing in Triple-a in the Yankees’ system in 2017.
Both homers on Wednesday were high flies that cleared the fence in right. The first was a solo homer in the third inning and the second was a three-run blast in the sixth.
“They usually come in bunches for me,” Culver said. “I’m a big feel guy. Once I feel one thing, I can kind of repeat it. Just trying to make it a little bit longer, you know what I mean? I usually don’t hit homers that way — high.”
The power display was more than enough to support Vazquez, who improved to 3-0 with a 1.67 earnedrun average this season. He limited the Aigles to five hits, two walks and one run in seven innings on a day he said he was struggling.
“I felt like I didn’t have my stuff, which is completely OK, because you’ve got to learn to compete when you don’t have your stuff,” Vazquez, who struck out four, said. “Maybe 20 starts out of the year, you’re going to have your stuff, 10 (starts), if you’re lucky. No, it wasn’t normal, but I’m happy with the end result.”
In the seventh inning, Montes became the first Valleycats player
penalized for a pitch-clock violation under the Frontier League’s new rules. Home plate umpire David Sherman gave Montes a strike for not being ready to hit with eight seconds left on the clock. Montes struck out later in the at-bat.
The Frontier League had a twoweek grace period to start the season when violations were called but not enforced.
Special guest
Tri-city Valleycats manager Pete Incaviglia was (sort of ) teammates with Darryl Strawberry with the New York Yankees in 1997.
Valleycats shortstop Cito Culver remembered Strawberry being around spring training when Culver was a Yankees minor-leaguer.
They’ll both see Strawberry again on Thursday night, when the retired Mets and Yankees slugger throws out the first pitch before Tri-city’s game against the Trois-rivieres Aigles at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
Strawberry, 61, will appear at the game after speaking at 3 p.m. Thursday to the Rensselaer County Heroin Coalition at the Bulmer Telecommunications Center at Hudson Valley Community College.
In between, Strawberry will have a pregame meet-and-greet at Rowdy’s, located in the third-base stands, from 5:30 p.m. to 6:10 p.m. In order to participate, fans must have a ticket to Thursday’s game. The event is limited to one autograph per person to accommodate as many fans as possible and will end promptly at 6:10. The event is first-come, firstserved.
Strawberry, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1980 MLB Draft, hit 335 homers with 1,000 RBI with eight Allstar appearances over 17 seasons with the Mets, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees. He played on World Series champions with the Mets in 1986 and the Yankees in 1996, 1998 and 1999.
Note: Incaviglia said he was awaiting X-ray results on outfielder Josh Broughton’s hand. Broughton had to leave Tuesday’s loss after fouling off a pitch.