Erie jumped on Curve starting pitcher Brian O\u2019Connor for five second-inning runs and cruised to a 6-2 triumph over Altoona on Thursday night at Blair County Ballpark before 4,716 fans.
\nO\u2019Connor allowed a one-out basehit to Kurt Airoso in the first inning, but breezed through the remainder of the frame with a pair of easy ground outs. In the second at bat for the Seawolves, who sport 43-73 mark the worst record in the Eastern League, even with two straight wins over the Curve, O\u2019Connor suddenly couldn\u2019t get an out.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t notice any problems with effort. I\u2019ve been saying this for two years,\u201d remarked Curve manager Dale Sveum. \u201cEverything is dictated by what happens in the first couple innings. I don\u2019t know what the odds are, but I\u2019ll bet you don\u2019t win 10 percent of your games when you are down 5-0 after the second inning. it just snowballs. I think the efforts the last two days by our pitchers leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the hitters. They get up there and feel they have to take some pitches. Then it gets you kind of out of your mood. You get frustrated because a lot of times the first pitch is a fastball right down the middle. It snowballs and leads to some bad nights at the plate.\u201d
\nCharlie Carter singled to begin the assault. Max St. Pierre walked and Raynor Bautista ripped a single to score Carter. Jim Hannihan cracked a double to plate St. Pierre and send Bautista to third base. Rod Lindsey, who had three hits on Wednesday night from his leadoff spot, rapped a two-run triple to make it 4-0 Erie at that point. Lindsey scored on a wild pitch to complete the five-spot.
\n\u201cIt was a number of things,\u201d explained O\u2019Connor. \u201cI couldn\u2019t throw strikes obviously. I started getting behind everybody, that\u2019s about it. There\u2019s not much else I can say. You want to win every game, especially in the pennant race. It makes things a lot tougher. Hopefully next time, I\u2019m going to go out there and do good and see what happens.\u201d
\nBrad Guy came on in relief for Altoona with one out in the second, picked Airoso, who had walked, off first base and got Cody Ross to fly out to end the inning. Guy performed a very important function, despite the loss by pitching six and 2\/3 innings up innings to save the rest of the bullpen. Guy scattered eight hits, allowing only one run to keep the Curve close, striking out five and walking one.
\n\u201cGoing out there so early in the game,\u201d said Guy, \u201cI was starting from zero and trying to keep the team in the game and get us a chance to score some runs and come back. Also, that early in the game, you want to eat up some innings and try to save the bullpen as well.\u201c
\nFor the second straight night, Erie received a super pitching performance form a pitcher who didn\u2019t have great stats coming into the game. This time, it was Clint Smith (4-9, 6.01 ERA) who tossed seven and 1\/3 innings, giving up one run on five hits, striking out four and walking two to pick up his fifth win of the year. Chris Peters, who pitched on Monday night against the Curve and couldn\u2019t even get anybody out, came back on Thursday to retire the only two hitters he faced to finish out the eighth inning. The Curve had cut the Seawolves lead to 6-1 on a single by Tony Alvarez, a walk to Shawn Skrehot and an RBI single by Kevin Sefcik all, with one out.
\nAltoona added a line-drive lead-off home run by J. J. Davis in the ninth, off reliever Kevin Lidle, but couldn\u2019t produce anything else to fall to 62-55. Gone once it left the bat, with no doubt, Erie leftfielder Cody Ross never moved on the home run ball hit by Davis.
\n\u201cWe are not worrying about numbers right now,\u201d said Davis. \u201cWe still have the confidence and homefield advantage. We know we have the team that can be in second place and if we don\u2019t do it, it\u2019s our own fault. We have to go out there and make the plays and hit the ball. Being down as many runs as we were today, we\u2019re not going to come back every time.\u201d
\nAltoona opens a three-game series at Blair County Ballpark today at 7:05 p.m. with Harrisburg, the club two and a half games in front of the Curve in third place, the goes to Reading, the team currently in second place for a three-game set Monday through Wednesday.
\n\u201cThe playoffs for us really start tomorrow,\u201d confided Sveum. \u201cWe\u2019ve luckily put ourselves in the situation to go out and take care of business for the next 20 days. It\u2019s all up to us. Obviously we have to win about 15 of those 20 to put ourselves in any situation during the last week of the season \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erie jumped on Curve starting pitcher Brian O\u2019Connor for five second-inning runs and cruised to a 6-2 triumph over Altoona on Thursday night at Blair County Ballpark before 4,716 fans. O\u2019Connor allowed a one-out basehit to Kurt Airoso in the first inning, but breezed through the remainder of the frame with a pair of easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}