Thunder fall to Curve in Game 1
TRENTON » Seven of the 12 games the Thunder and Curve played this season were decided by one run.
Would you expect anything other than a tense nail biter when the two hooked up in the Eastern League Championship Series?
Give Game 1 to the Curve. Brandon Waddell threw six scoreless innings, Mitchell Tolman and Elvis Escobar hit RBI singles and Altoona escaped a jam in the eighth inning to beat the Thunder, 2-1, on Tuesday night to take the first game of the best-of-five series at Arm & Hammer Park.
Game 2 is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Wednesday night. The Thunder send left-hander Justus Sheffield to the mound opposed by right-hander JT Brubaker.
Bobby Mitchell went back to right-hander Dillon Tate in Game 1 despite his rough outing in the ELDS against Binghamton, and the 23-year-old responded with an improved effort.
Tate tossed six innings of onerun ball, limiting the Curve to four hits, while striking out three and walking two.
But he’ll also rue three straight two-out singles in the fifth inning — all after he got a double play ball — that gave Altoona a 1-0 lead. The last of those, a sinking liner by Elvis Escobar, caromed off the glove of second baseman Abiatal Avelino.
“He’s got to command his fastball early in counts,” Mitchell said before the game. “I think if you ask any pitching coach, that’s what they try to teach to start and then you work your secondary stuff and if it’s near the zone, you’re going to get swings at it. If it’s 1-0 and he’s throwing a breaking ball and it’s way out of the zone, it’s 2-0, and that’s where pitchers get in trouble.”
Altoona added to its advantage in the seventh off Jose Mesa Jr., snapping the right-hander’s streak of scoreless innings at 22.1.
The Thunder sliced the deficit in half in the eight on Thairo Estrada’s RBI infield single after pinch hitter Billy Fleming and Jeff Hendrix both singled and Nick Solak sacrificed them to second and third.
That’s all the home team got because Hendrix was thrown out at the plate trying to score on a grounder to third baseman Wyatt Mathieson. It appeared Hendrix got a bad jump on the ball and the threat petered out when Dante Bichette Jr. grounded out.
The Thunder also squandered an opportunity to score in the fifth when they wasted a leadoff double by Rashad Crawford and left him stranded at third.
Avelino doubled with one out in the ninth, but was left stuck on third when Tanner Anderson got Sharif Othman, in his first ever postseason at-bat, to swing at strike three.