Captains fall in extra innings

The crowd wasn’t large at Classic Park on May 3 for the finale of a three-game series between the Captains and Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.

THE SCORE

TIMBER RATTLERS 11, CAPTAINS 7 (1)

Wisconsin prevailed, 117, in 11 innings.

Announced attendance was 1,003, and that count definitely included tickets sold but unused.

The handful of fans who stuck it out to the end of the game got their first look at a much-discussed new rule designed to speed play.

This season, at all levels of the minor leagues, in games that go extra innings, a runner will automatically be placed at second base at the beginning of each at-bat. It’s an arrangement that’s been used for many years in girls fastpitch softball and in some international baseball competitions, including the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is the driving force behind this and other adjustments to professional baseball’s time-honored ways of doing things.

So when these two teams each scored four runs through nine innings, the new rule designed to speed play got its first exposure in Eastlake.

Let’s be kind and report that while scoring was stimulated in extra innings by placing runners at second base before a pitch was sent plate-ward, the desired effect of speeding play was not produced.

In the top of the 10th inning,

the visitors sent six batters to the plate and scored two runs. One of the runs was scored by Zack Clark, the designated runner who opened the frame at second base.

The Captains answered with two runs in the bottom of the 10th, sending five batters to the plate. Designated runner Oscar Gonzalez raced home on an error by Wisconsin second baseman Nick Roscetti. An RBI triple by Tyler Friis accounted for the other run and pushed the game to the 11th inning.

Wisconsin didn’t need any help from the new rule to do serious damage in the top of the 11th inning.

Eight batters, two Lake County pitching changes and five runs later, the Timber Rattlers had an 11-6 lead.

The Captains couldn’t match that output in the bottom of the 11th, although they notched a run when Austen Wade’s one-out single sent home designated runner Ernie Clement from third base.

The game took 3 hours, 26 minutes to complete.

By the time the final out was recorded, designated runners notwithstanding, there may have been 25 fans in the stands.