Rockford RiverHawks starter Kyle Wright kept Southern Illinois Miners hitters off balance as they struggled to make consistent contact with his pitches. On the other hand, Miners starter Tony Bradley could not miss the opposing bats.
That combination proved to be too much for the Miners to overcome as they fell to the Riverhawks, 7-3.
“Sometimes you tip your cap to the guy that was on the mound and go ‘you were pretty darn good today.’ And he was pretty darn good,” said Miners manager Mike Pinto after the game. “I get upset when we kick games, and throw games … when we do a really bad job. That’s when you’ll see me upset. You’re going to have these games; you’re going to lose some these. We’ll win some of these as well. Today it just didn’t work on our side.”
Wright tossed eight innings of three-hit ball as he struck out 11 hitters en route to his fourth win of the season. Conversely, Bradley struggled after working a 1-2-3 top of the first inning.
The lefty starter served up seven runs on eight hits as he faced 15 hitters in only 2.1 innings of work.
“That’s the second time I’ve had to go to my bullpen in the second or third inning and that has a lingering effect for multiple days when that happens. We’ve got to figure out what’s going with Tony,” Pinto said. “He’s got better stuff than that and right now I just don’t know what’s going on.
It was up, it was flat and his velocity wasn’t there. When you put those three together it’s generally going to be a tough night for you.”
But after the RiverHawks hung seven runs on Bradley, whose record dropped to 3-2, the Southern Illinois bullpen shut the door on Rockford’s offense.
Jake McMurran, Cody Dunbar, Derrick Miramontes and Mike Phelps combined to throw 6.2 innings of shutout ball, scattering three hits in the process. McMurran picked up a good bulk of that outing, throwing a scoreless 3.2 innings with two strikeouts.
“Every guy we brought out of the bullpen did a good job today. We had a bunch of zeros. If you take away the seven in the second and third inning, we have a baseball game,” Pinto said.
Southern Illinois (18-13) looks to even the three-game series at one win apiece as it sends Joe Augustine against Rockford (14-18).
Notes: Infielder Gered Mochizuki’s contract was purchased by the New York Mets on Wednesday. … Former Stanford pitcher David Stringer is expected to be activated for today’s game.
