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The Gateway Grizzlies had a 3-0 lead slip away on a homer in the top of the eighth inning on Sunday night against the Evansville Otters, but regained it for good on a two-run home run by Kevin Krause in the bottom of the inning in a 5-3 victory at Grizzlies Ballpark, giving the home team an enormous series win.
Prior to the late dramatics, the story of the game was Gateway starter Deylen Miley. After stranding runners at second and third base in the top of the first, the Grizzlie right-hander played the role of stopper, retiring 13 batters in a row spanning the first through fifth innings. The Frontier League’s leader in strikeouts fanned eight batters to bring his total to 132 on the season, and pitched a career-high seven and one-third innings to allow the Grizzlies to build an early lead.
In the bottom of the third inning on offense, Edwin Mateo led off against Chip Korbacher with a double, went to third on a grounder to first base, and scored when Abdiel Diaz reached on an error by the pitcher for a 1-0 Gateway lead. After Kyle Gaedele singled Diaz to third base, Peter Zimmermann came through with a sacrifice fly to right field, doubling the lead to 2-0. In the bottom of the fourth, the lead swelled to 3-0 when Tyler Shelnut hit his first professional home run, a solo shot off the left field foul pole.
Miley continued to hold the line until the eighth inning, when he departed with a runner on first and one out following his final strikeout of the day. Matt Hickey (4-2) was summoned from the bullpen, and he got Gary Mattis to pop a pitch up down the right field line that dropped in between Zimmermann, Gaedele, and Gabe Holt just fair for a double. Dakota Phillips would make the Grizzlies pay for the non-catch, blasting a game-tying three-run home run to right field to knot the score up at 3-3.
But the Grizzlies had an answer. Evansville right-hander Jon Beymer (4-2) walked Zimmermann to lead off the bottom of the inning, and against rookie left-hander Grif Hughes, Krause got into a 3-1 count before blasting a two-run, go-ahead home run over the left field fence, putting the Grizzlies back in the lead at 5-3. That set up Leoni De La Cruz in the ninth inning, and after a leadoff single, the flamethrowing southpaw got a flyout to center field and a strikeout for the first two outs of the frame.
De La Cruz would bend further, hitting Giovanni DiGiacomo with a pitch to put the tying runs on base, and then balking the runners into scoring position. But the former Otter bore down again from there, striking out ex-teammate David Mendham looking on a slider, ending the game with his tenth save as a Grizzlie and giving Gateway the huge rubber-game victory.
The Grizzlies will look to ride their momentum into the next series, a critical home set against the Lake Erie Crushers, whom Gateway leads by 2.0 games in standings for second place in the Frontier League’s West Division. The series will begin on Tuesday night in Springfield, Illinois at Robin Roberts Stadium, marking the return of professional baseball to Illinois’ capital city for the first time in 23 years. First pitch is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CT.
