Cloyd’s big first game leads to sweep of doubleheader

Tyler Cloyd met the halfway point of the Clippers’ day-night doubleheader against the Louisville Bats yesterday afternoon at Huntington Park with a face-first fall onto the clubhouse couch.

Cloyd (2-3) had a reason to look for a soft place to land. He had just pitched a nine-inning complete game in the opener, a 19-3 blowout victory for the Clippers that, at times, deserved Bugs Bunny sound effects.

“I’m going to sit around, wait around, try to get some rest and rehydrate,” he said, smiling.

Six hours later, Cloyd was up again and among the Clippers celebrating a 2-1 victory in a second game that pitching dominated from the start to the wild finish.

With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 1-1 tie, Louisville manager Jim Riggleman moved right fielder Justin Bourgeois to the left side of the infield. Audy Ciriaco promptly hit a shot that handcuffed Bourgeois and scored Elliot Johnson from third base with the winning run.

“I had pretty good contact,” said Ciriaco, who had four hits in the first game. “The ball went right to him, but thank God he fumbled the ball. All that matters is that we won the game.”

Told that the play had been scored a single, Ciriaco smiled. “That’s even better,” he said. “I’ll take it. I mean, they’re playing in and I got a good piece of it. When you’re playing in and they smoke the ball at you, they normally call it a hit. It’s a difficult play to make.”

The single ended a tautly played game. Toru Murata pitched 71⁄ innings

3 and allowed only one run. Nick Hagadone (2-3) entered in the eighth inning with two on and one out and worked out of the jam. He pitched a perfect ninth to get the victory over Jumto bo Diaz (2-2).

The first-game victory featured everything that the Clippers needed, a rarity lately during a team slump. Besides the 105pitch, seven-hitter by Cloyd, the offense clicked from top to bottom with a season-high 22 hits to go with the season high in runs.

Everyone in the lineup had at least one hit, with Tyler Holt joining Ciriaco by finishing with four. Louisville starter Matt Maloney (0-2) allowed 10 runs and 15 hits over four innings.

The game was lopsided enough that Riggleman, already wedded to a bullpen day for the second game, pitched outfielders Felix Perez and Hernan Iribarren in a nine-run Columbus eighth inning.

Perez walked four consecutive batters and then surrendered six consecutive hits before finally recording an out on Johnson’s sacrifice fly. Irabarren moved from right field to the mound and got Ryan Rohlinger to hit into a fielder’s choice end the carnage.

“We got after their starter pretty good and then continued to add runs,” Clippers manager Chris Tremie said. “We kept the chain moving. We had a little bit of everything offensively.”

Cloyd’s performance allowed the Clippers to reach the second game with a fully loaded bullpen.

“I’m at a loss for words as how big that was going into game two,” Tremie said. “That was a huge outing for us.”

Cloyd understood the situation. He didn’t dwell on it.

“I thought about it in the morning,” he said. “But once I got into the game, I was just throwing the ball and trusting myself. I was working down and able to work in with my fastball better than I have been. So that really helped me a lot.”

Cloyd gave up solo home runs to Bourgeois, Argenis Diaz and Bryan Anderson, but Columbus’ offense effectively erased those from his mind.