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(Courtesy Southern Illinois Miners)
The Southern Illinois Miners dropped both halves of a doubleheader made necessary by Saturday’s game’s suspension due to rain, 11-9 in nine innings and 5-3 in seven innings, as River City completed a sweep to end the Miners’ nine-game road trip.
Leading 1-0 when the game was suspended in the second inning, River City eventually widened their lead in game one of the doubleheader (the resumption of Saturday’s contest) to 11-0 after four innings of play. But the Miners would stage a huge rally, scoring seven runs in the sixth inning on three homers to claw back into the game.
After Frank Martinez worked a walk to lead off, Aaron Gates blasted a deep two-run shot to right-center for the Miners’ first runs. After a strikeout, Jay Austin singled and Steve Marino followed suit with a deep two-run home run of his own to left-center as the lead was cut to 11-4. Later in the frame, with two runners on and two outs after Matt Jones walked and Marquis Riley singled, Niko Vasquez lifted a three run homer over the left field wall to make it 11-7.
In the ninth, with two outs, it was Gates coming through again with another two-run bomb to right-center field for his season-best fourth hit of the contest, and against former Miner Gabe Shaw to make it 11-9, but the next batter struck out to end the game denying the chance to get the tying run to the plate.
In game two, a bases-loaded walk in the first by Chris Burke and an RBI single with two outs by Ryan Cavan made it 2-0 in the first two innings, as the Miners held the lead for the first time in the series. But River City came back with a three-run homer as part of a four-run bottom of the second to take the lead back for good. The Miners pieced together a run in the sixth, but could not come back in suffering their third sweep of the season.
The Miners return home on Tuesday, August 19th, to start a six-game homestand against the Frontier Greys at 7:05 p.m. Matt Bywater will pitch for the Miners against the Greys’ Mark Belcastro.
