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| Fox allowed 6 runs, but set down his last 6 hitters. |
It did not take long to see that Saturday night's seventh Game of the Week between the Elk Grove Transmissions Knights and the Mobile DJ Services Storm would be a match-up of offenses. The score after two full innings was already 6-6, there had been twelve hits, and both teams had already called to the bullpen. Visions of a back-and-forth slugfest between hot teams contrasted sharply with the icy, gushing wind, and the game had the look of a memorable one.
Unfortunately, after two full innings, the game was all Knights as they rode a sixteen-run top of the third inning to a victory by a football-esque final score of 24-7.
Despite the lopsided end result, the fireworks of the first two innings cannot be understated. The Knights started the game by plating their first six batters on five hits and one error to take a foreboding 6-0 lead against Storm starting pitcher Grayson Fox. Joel Barragan, Chase Isbell, Mike Lucas, and Jeremy Caldwell all hit singles to left field before Thomas Colton reached on an error and Nick Pruitt went to right for a single en route to four runs, and then Christian Janini and Zach Aguila had RBI groundouts to finish the flurry. Despite the early onslaught, Fox found a groove and, starting with Janini, ended up retiring the final six batters he faced, striking out a pair, using an array of pitches and a sidearm release point to hold the line for his team.
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| Caldwell hits a 1st inning single, one of 5 to start the game. |
In the bottom of the first, already down six, the Storm answered back by flexing their own offensive muscles against hard-throwing hurler Nick Pruitt. Fox blooped an infield single, moved to second on a textbook sacrifice bunt by Nick Cooling, and moved to third on a grounder by Anders Davies. At this point, the Storm might have folded into a scoreless inning, but instead they started a rally of their own. Matt Kuhl singled to plate Fox, Miguel Saragoza drove a sharp double the other way, just out of the reach of a diving Anthony Gentile in rightfield, and David Miller capped it with a deep two-run triple to center that made things a respectable 6-3.
But the Storm weren't done. Following Fox's 1-2-3 top of the second, Denis Vajraca lead off with an infield single and then moved on a fielders' choice by Taylor Simmons that wasn't handled by Lucas at second. Stan Dettner then worked a work and Marc Gerdin then hit a hard ground ball that bounced high off the lip of the grass for a single and two RBI. Dettner then stole home on the back end of a double steal and Brendan Turner turned an epic eight pitch at-bat into a long double that left the score knotted at six apiece.
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| Barragan's 2-run home run capped the scoring. |
But that would not be true for long. In the third inning, the Knights had a rally of epic proportions against Storm ace right-hander Anders Davies as all thirteen hitters reached base to start the inning as wildness, offensive strength, and bad fortune with the infield in turned a tie game into a 22-6 deficit. During the charge, Isbell, Lucas, Colton, Janini, Nick Bernett, Gentile, and Pruitt all had RBI singles, J.C. Ebrado had a hard two-run single up the middle. But, despite all of those hits, the biggest play of the inning came with the bases loaded on a high chopping ground ball over third base off the bat of Lucas. What looked like another two-run single took a wild hop in left to get by the outfielder, allowing Lucas to leg out an inside-the-park grand slam, giving him six RBI on the day and providing an exclamation mark on a superlative offensive inning.
Making the lead hold up for the Knights were Colton and Caldwell, who combined to throw only nine balls in four innings of relief. Colton allowed the Storm's final run in the fourth when Miller singled, stole second and third, and came home on Vajraca's RBI groundout, but that was the only baserunner in the final four frames. Colton struck out three in three innings of work, and Caldwell K'd a pair in a perfect sixth inning.
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| Kuhl struck out 6 in 3 superb innings of relief. |
The Knights capped their scoring in the fifth inning on a more traditional big hit. After J.D. Salazar walked with one down, Barragan drove the first pitch deep to dead center field. Armed with some of the league's best wheels, Barragan had to slow down twice to allow the lead runner to score ahead of him but still came across the plate easily for a two-run homerun for the final scoring of the evening.
Despite an otherwise rough pitching day in which they allowed 24 runs on 17 hits, the Storm did settle down behind the strong relief work on Matt Kuhl, a pitcher that played JV baseball at Sheldon High School this past spring. Working with a nasty curveball and a tough moving fastball, Kuhl struck out six hitters in three innings of work, allowing only Barragan's home run while otherwise remaining unscathed.
The pre-game festivities were punctuated by a beautiful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner performed by Storm manager Andrew Davies. Davies planned to perform it as a duet with his daughter, but she was unable to attend because of a birthday party, so he went solo and performed fantastically.
