Blue Crabs win 3 of 4 in New Britain
Drop series finale to Bees on walk-off hit in 10th
Coming into Sunday’s series finale in New Britain, the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs were a red hot baseball team.
They were riding a sixgame win streak and had outscored their opponents 29-5 with three wins by shutout during the week, allowing just one run in the last 37 innings.
That all came to be abrupt halt and it was a former Blue Crab doing the honors as Jovan Rosa’s bases-loaded RBI single in the bottom of the 10th inning gave the Bees a 3-2 win.
Rosa split time between Bridgeport and Southern Maryland last season.
“Walks and errors killed us today. it would have been nice to get the sweep,” Blue Crabs manager John Harris said. “Winning three of out four it always good, especially on the road.”
Against Blue Crabs reliever Trey Masek, who came out of the bullpen for the 10th, New Britain’s Steve Carrillo reached first on an error and went to second as James Skelton walked. With Michael Crouse up to bat, both runners then took off for a double steal.
Still with no outs, Crouse was hit by a pitch to load the bases and David Russo was summoned to come in for Masek, which led to the huge game-winning hit by Rosa.
New Britain pitcher Joe Biemel picked up the win out of the bullpen, pitching two scoreless innings with one strikeout. Masek suffered the loss for Southern Maryland.
The winning streak reached six in a row after the Blue Crabs defeated New Britain on Friday 3-1 to begin the series then swept Saturday’s daynight doubleheader, 2-0 and 6-0.
Southern Maryland (1918 overall), which have won seven out of its last 10 games, jumped into
second place in the Atlantic League’s Freedom Division, two games behind Lancaster (21-16). The Blue Crabs traveled to York for a three-game series in York, which kicked off Tuesday and continues with an 11 a.m. start today followed by Thursday’s finale. The Blue Crabs are back home Friday when they begin a three-game series versus New Britain.
Sunday, Jose Lozada hit a led off the game for Southern Maryland with a double to right field, advanced to third on an Edwin Garcia single and scored on Michael Snyder’s sacrifice fly to center.
The score was pushed to 2-0 when Garcia scored on a Zach Wilson double to right. That was all the scoring for the Blue Crabs on the day as New Britain pitching allowed just three hits in the final nine-plus innings.
Blue Crabs starter Pat McCoy allowed one run on six hits in six innings in a no-decision.
In Game 1 of Saturday’s doubleheader, Blue Crabs starter Brian Grening pitched a complete-game
shutout, allowing just four hits with 10 strikeouts and no walks.
Back-to-back RBI doubles from Devon Rodriguez and Zach Cone in the second inning accounted for the only runs of the seven-inning game.
Southern Maryland swept the doubleheader after a win in the nightcap, again scoring three runs in
the top of the second with Lozada’s run-scoring double capping the inning.
Blue Crabs starter Gaby Hernandez and Cody Hebner combined on the shutout.
Hernandez went eight innings, allowing six hits with eight strikeouts and did not walk any batters. Hebner struck out all three hitters he faced in the ninth.
In Friday’s series opener, all of the Blue Crabs runs came on bases-loaded twoout singles from Rodriguez and Cone in the top of the first.
Drew Hayes got his first win ever as a Blue Crab, going 6 1/3 innings, allowing just one run on six hits with seven strikeouts and one walk.
“Our starting pitching was lights out this series,” Harris said. “Offensively, someone new is coming up big in the batting lineup. Devon and Zach really had some big hits for us in the series.”