Perez’s home run enough to lift Hooks
Sunday’s game between the Arkansas Travelers and Corpus Christi Hooks was essentially silent through five full innings. That was until Joe Perez stepped to the plate for his fourth at-bat.
The Corpus Christi third baseman had Yorbin Ceuta and Corey Julks on base and, considering his performance early in this six-game series with the Travelers, he was looking for more.
“Whether it was picking up the ball or repeating the swing,” Perez said about his hitting performance the first half of the series, in which he went 2 for 12. “But [I] just stuck with my approach, found a pitch to hit and just trusted myself to get the job done.”
With an 0-1 count, Perez crushed a ball to deep left-center field for a three-run home run to give him his first RBI of the series. He finished 2 for 4 with 2 runs scored and 3 RBI to go with a walk.
His home run was the turning point of the game, and one of the few moments of excitement as Corpus Christi (46-56) held on for a 5-4 win against Arkansas (5547) at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock to take the regular-season finale between the two teams.
Prior to the Perez homer, the game boiled down to the first half inning, as a sacrifice fly from Corpus Christi’s Scott Schrieber on the third at-bat of the game drove in Julks. It would be the only run scored through the first five innings.
The game, which was 10 minutes shy of lasting four hours, was an ugly affair on the mound for the Hooks and on the base paths for the Travs. In total, the two squads stranded 25 baserunners, with Arkansas leaving 15. All eight pitchers combined to walk 19 batters, with Corpus Christi totaling 13 of those.
“We didn’t take advantage of opportunities,” Travelers manager Colin Cowgill said. “They gave us 13 baserunners, 14 baserunners, and we only pushed across four runs.”
The Travelers didn’t score any until the final third of the game, as fielder’s choices from Dom Thompson-Williams in the seventh and Jack Larsen in the eighth plated their first two runs.
Kaden Polcovich and Thompson-Williams were two up, two down to start the bottom of the ninth, but Jake Anchia’s single and Stephen Wrenn’s walk put two Travelers on with Bobby Honeyman stepping to the plate.
Honeyman delivered, driving the first pitch he saw into shallow left, bouncing it past Hooks left fielder Matthew Barefoot. However, Travs shortstop Patrick Frick went down on five pitches for a strikeout to finish the game.
Despite the loss, the Travelers were winners of the series, winning four of six. On the season, Arkansas went 8-4 against the Hooks.
Next up for the Travelers is a six-game home series against the first-place Wichita Wind Surge, but Cowgill said that, at this point, he’s not concerned with standings or records.
“Win every game” is Cowgill’s message to the Travelers, he said. “We’re just trying to prepare these guys for the big leagues, so we’re gonna do that one game at a time.”
Following Sunday’s loss, Arkansas is five games back of the Wind Surge and two games back of the second-place Frisco RoughRid- ers in the Class AA Central Division. Following their upcoming series with Wichita, the Travelers will finish the regular season with two series on the road, first against last-place Springfield and then another against the Wind Surge.