On a beautiful night in Binghamton, with one of the largest attendance turnouts of the season, the Rumble Ponies cruised to an easy 6-0 victory over the BaySox thanks to a quality start from RHP Harol Gonzalez and a full team effort offensively. (box score)
Pitching
From the very beginning of the game, Gonzalez showed that he was going to attack hitter and pound the strike zone, needing only 10 pitches (9 strikes) to record the first three outs of the game, including two strikeouts and a base hit and steal by Cedric Mullins. He would continue this trend throughout the night tossing no more than 15 pitches in any single inning while inducing a lot of weak contact. In fact Mullins would be the ONLY BaySox player to reach second base while Gonzalez was on the mound, stranding two runners on first base in the second and fourth innings and eliminating the fourth base hit against him with in a double play in the seventh.
Gonzalez would finish his night after 84 pitches (56 strikes) [67% strike rate], tossing seven innings of shut-out ball allowing only four hits while striking out four. His fastball was consistently in the 90-91 mph range and he paired it with an excellent curveball, that produced a couple of ugly swings, to generate twelve swinging strikes on the night. He also used a change-up a handful of times but it was more of a “show-me” pitch and didn’t seem to be a big part of his game-plan.
RHP Eric Hanhold entered the game in relief of Gonzalez in the eighth inning and shut the door on the BaySox with four strikeouts across two innings of work, although he did struggle a little bit with his command in the ninth inning. Hanhold was consistently between 96-97 mph with his fastball, although the pitch seemed a bit flat as both hits he allowed came off the heater. His slider was clearly the more effective pitch as it generated six swinging strike by itself ranging anywhere from 88-91 mph.
Photo by Logan Barer, MMO
Hitting
The six runs the Rumble Ponies scored was a full team effort as every hitter in the lineup had at least one hit and eight different players either scoring or driving in a run. The team actually started the game looking a bit lost against BaySox starter Alex Wells as the lefty retired the first six batters of the game with relative ease. His cross-fire arm action from the extreme left side of the rubber seemed to give guys trouble at first but by the third inning, the offense had already adjusted.
Luis Carpio and Will Toffey would get a rally started with back to back singles, to open the bottom of the third, followed by a swinging bunt by Michael Paez that moved them into scoring position. The next batter, Sam Haggerty, would drive in the first run of the game with a line drive single up the middle to score Carpio, though it was hit too hard to allow Toffey to score. Two batters later, and after Haggerty had stolen second base, Patrick Mazeika would drive in both remaining runners with a base hit down the right field line to give Binghamton a 3-0 lead.
Barrett Barnes and Gavin Cecchini would both drive in single runs in the fifth inning and seventh innings, respectively, but the big blast of the night came off the bat of top prospect Andres Gimenez in the sixth inning. Leading off, Gimenez jumped on a first pitch fastball and pulled it WAY over the right field wall AND over the new batting cage complex in right field, which would be at least 400 feet from home plate.
Luis Carpio, Photo By Ernest Dove
Defense
With Andres Gimenez serving as the DH we did get to see Luis Carpio at shortstop tonight and he was as smooth as ever with the glove. His movements were extremely fluid and every throw he made was right to the center of David Thompson‘s chest.
The only defensive mishaps that occurred came from Barrett Barnes in right field (who’s usually a solid defender) and Michael Paez in left field (who was making his first career start in the outfield). Both guys got horrible reads on back to back fly balls in sixth inning which forced them to both make sliding catches. No harm, no foul….but it certainly was odd to see happen in succession.
