Mistakes Trip Up Cutters

Morgantown, W.V.- A pair of Crosscutters errors lead to a four-run, West Virginia 6th, as Williamsport fell 4-1 in the series opener.

Colton Eastman tossed a pair of scoreless innings in the front of a piggy-back start with Jack Perkins. Eastman allowed two hits and a walk while striking out two. Perkins worked two scoreless frames, working around a hit and striking out one.

Rafael Carvajal took over in the 5th, tossing a scoreless frame, but his defense let him down in the bottom of the 6th as back-to-back errors by Jake Holmes and Brayan Gonzalez allowed the first two batters to reach. Follow that with a walk to load the bases with no outs. Grant Koch singled to score Fabricio Macias to make it 1-0 West Virginia.

With the bases loaded and one out, Jhoan Herrera popped up down the left field line, dropping in just fair to allow Brett Kinneman to score and make it 2-0. During the play, Ben Pelletier held on to the baseball and as he underhand tossed the ball to shortstop Seth Lancaster, Mike Gretler raced home from 3rd to make it 3-0 Black Bears.

Kyle Watson capped the inning with an RBI single, scoring Grant Koch to make it 4-0 West Virgina, with all four runs against Carvajal being unearned.

Carvajal finished the night, throwing two innings, allowing the four unearned runs on four hits and a walk while striking out one batter.

Abdallah Aris worked around a single and struck out one over an inning of relief in the bottom of the 7th inning. His first outing since August 6th.

Williamsport’s offense came around in the top of the 8th inning, seeing their first three batters reach base thanks to a double to deep center from Jesse Wilkening, a walk to Seth Lancaster and an infield single from Jesus Henriquez, all against Black Bears reliever Alec Rennard.

Rennard was lifted after the single from Henriquez, as West Virginia brought in Connor Loeprich with the top of the line up coming to the plate. Loeprich struck out Ben Aklinski, allowed a RBI ground out to Rafael Marchan and then struck outEdwin Rodriguez to get out of the inning with the Black Bears leading 4-1.

Oscar Marcelino worked a scoreless bottom of the 8th inning, striking out two of the three batters he faced. It was Marcelino’s first appearance since the 6th of August.

Williamsport managed to bring the tying run to the plate in the top of the 9th inning but could not plate a run, falling in the opening game of the series.

The Crosscutters play the second game of their series in West Virginia tomorrow night, first pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.

Cutter Carvings – The Crosscutters and Black Bears are an even 5-5 through the first 10 meetings, with two more to go…The Crosscutters now have three more strikeouts than hits on the season after striking out 10 times and collecting seven hits…Ben Aklinski was the lone Crosscutters batter to post multiple hits…