Mike Kaffee
Hurricanes Baseball Reporter
[email protected]
Miami got off to a very disappointing start tonight being shutout for the first time this season 11-0 behind the strong pitching of last year’s pitcher of the year Rhett Lowder. Lowder over the course of 7 innings, allowed just three hits and struck out 9. The Deacons showed why they are ranked second in the nation being first in runs and 6th in HRs. Tonight, it was more than Karson Ligon could handle not being able to complete the 4th inning after giving up 8 runs on 7 hits. The game expected to be a HR derby only saw one ball leave the park tonight coming in the 4th inning. As for Miami, the offense was totally stagnated. The best they could mount was leaving a runner on third after Ian Farrow lead off the third with a double. The four remaining singles that they managed to get off of the Deacon’s pitching were scattered that never amounted to any sort of scoring opportunity. Overall, we batted .161 on just 5 hits, striking out 12 times. You can’t win ball games with those types of numbers. The only bright spot to come out of the game was that we didn’t have to go deep to our BP leaving everyone available. Ben Chestnutt came in to relieve Karson to record the final out in the 4th and remained for the rest of the game. The last time Miami got shut out was May 20th of last year against ND, 5-0.
The only changes to the lineup were Blake Cyr playing 2B, batting 5th, and Ian Farrow as DH, batting 8th.
Fireworks didn’t start until the third inning. Scoreless at that point. Miami opened the first with CJ walking, but the inning ended on a 6-4-3 DP. In the second, Zach leading off reached safely on an E5, but three Ks followed and ended that. The third for the Canes was their best opportunity to get runs on the board with Ian Farrow leading off with a double to right. CJ walked with one out, but Lowder recorded his 4th and 5th strikeout ending Miami’s last real threat to put a run on the board.
The bottom of the 3rd, the Deacons put the pedal to the metal sending nine to the plate and coming away with 4 runs on 3 hits with a pair of walks. The inning started with a batter being hit and it went downhill from there. It looked like Karson was going to walk away with minimum damage with just two runs and leaving BL, except for the single that followed scoring two more runs.
Wake added 4 more in the following inning with a lead-off single followed by the only HR of the game. A couple of more hits followed along with a costly error by Yoyo accounting for 2 unearned runs as a result. With the Canes trailing at the end of 4, things didn’t look promising on another comeback. In ten of our last 21 games, we have crawled back from being down, but tonight was not going to be number 11.
Tonight it was all Deacons. The five-game winning streak is over. All those fabulous statistics being 5th nationally in HRs and 16th in slugging percentage, and scoring double digits in our last three contests are just that; statistics. Tonight, we showed the other side of our potent offense. Tomorrow is another day and a chance to even up the series. Whether the loss is 1-0 or 11-0 it goes into the books as an L without any asterisks.
The offense just did not have it tonight. No one with multiple hits with 1 hit of 5 being for Extra bases (Ian Farrow-double).
Tomorrow it is bounce-back time with Gage Ziehl on the mound with a start time of 4PM
