Indians bounce back
With their pride wounded after the previous night’s shutout defeat, the Spokane Indians bounced back in a big way, rolling to a 10-2 Northwest League baseball win over the Yakima Bears Tuesday night at Avista Stadium.
The Indians started their next-to-last game of the season on a rough note when starting pitcher Michael Main went down after the first batter of the night, Yakima’s Evan Frey, hit a ball up the middle that pegged Main on the leg.
Main tried throwing a few more pitches, but the coaching staff erred on the side of caution and took him out.
“He’ll be all right, he got hit in the front of the leg and he’ll probably just have a big bruise,” Indians manager Tim Hulett said. “But we saw no reason to take any chances by leaving him in the game.”
Main was replaced by southpaw Ryan Falcon. Yakima scored an unearned run charged to Main and an earned run charged to Falcon before the inning ended. But Falcon (5-2) didn’t give up another run over his 4 1/3 innings on his way to the win. Jordan Stewart and Daniel Sattler kept the Bears silent, allowing only two hits in the final 4 2/3 innings.
The Indians (33-41) found their momentum on offense in the third when a Davis Stoneburner single kick-started the Spokane attack. Hits from Mitch Moreland, Ian Gac and Eric Fry eventually culminated in four runs scored and Spokane never looked back. The Indians struck again in the middle innings, scoring three runs in the fifth and two in the sixth.
Moreland had four hits with Beltre, Lawson and Fry getting two apiece. Moreland and Gac had three RBIs apiece and Lawson two.
Lawson also had a stellar night on defense, making on-the-run throws and full-extension catches that robbed the Bears of several hits.
It was fitting that the game ended on a play by Lawson: With two outs and a runner on second, Yakima shortstop Mark Hallberg hit a grounder that looked as if it would roll through the infield for a hit. Lawson came sprinting out to meet it, fluidly catching the ball and flipping it to Moreland on first base to make the final out.
“It was just because the pitchers threw ground balls. When you have a guy like Stewart pitching you kinda have an idea of what the batter’s gonna do, and that just comes with playing with guys for so long,” Lawson said. “You can guess one way or the other just based on how you know he’s gonna pitch it.
“So it might’ve looked like I was flying everywhere, but I kinda already had an idea of what was going to happen.”
Tuesday night’s 10-run, 14-hit performance was a far cry from the scoreless debacle from the night before.
“After the meeting we had yesterday with Coach, he said that we’re professionals and that we needed to finish strong,” Lawson said. “Winning is so much more fun than losing, so right now we’re just having a good time.”
But what brought on the sudden offensive surge?
“If I knew the answer to that, we would have done a lot better a whole lot earlier,” Hulett said. “It’s probably just that we’re more relaxed now.”