The first two days of the 2016 season couldn’t have gone much better for Matt Rose.
Rose hit a walk-off single in the 11th inning driving home the winning run and giving the Eugene Emeralds a 2-1 win over the Boise Hawks Saturday evening. His late-game heroics came just over 24 hours after he hit a two-run homer in the Emeralds 6-1 win on Friday.
“I’m seeing the ball well,” Rose said. “Besides the two strikeouts today, but those things happen. Just gotta stay through the middle of the field and good things will happen.”
Andruw Monasterio started the bottom of the 11th with a leadoff walk for the Emeralds and was then bunted over to second by Kevonte Mitchell. With one out, Rose stepped to the plate and laced an opposite-field line drive that was nearly caught by Boise right fielder Bobby Stahel.
The ball clipped off Stahel’s glove as he was charging in, and Monasterio came around to score before Stahel could get a throw to the plate.
“I was just trying to score the run,” Rose said. “The guy throws hard; I just had to put the bat on the ball. I barely swung.”
Tommy Nance earned the win for the Emeralds in his first appearance of the season. Nance tossed two innings and struck out two while walking one. One of those strikeouts came on the final at-bat in the top of the 11th, when Nance punched out Stahel to retire the side with a runner stranded on first.
Nance combined with Michael Knighton and M.T. Minacci to toss six scoreless innings in relief of Eugene starter Bryan Hudson.
Hudson—a six-foot, eight-inch left-hander—was the Chicago Cubs third round pick (82nd overall) in the 2015 MLB Draft. Saturday marked his season debut with the Emeralds, and he threw five innings and surrendered one run while striking out two. Hudson is ranked as the Cubs 15th best prospect by MLB.com, and consistently spotted his fastball in the 88-90 mph range on Saturday.
“He’s a gamer,” Rose said. “He kept us in the game and then the bullpen just came in and shut the door.”
Boise scored its lone run of the game in the fourth inning when Luis Castro lined a one-out double to left-center. Stahel followed with a single to drive home Castro and later stole second to get himself in scoring position before Hudson worked his way out of a jam with a strikeout.
Eugene’s bats stayed silent for the early part of the game; they mustered just three hits in the first seven innings before they broke through. In the seventh, Rose reached on a leadoff walk, and Chris Pieters followed with a single. Later in the inning, Alberto Mieno grounded out to second, but Boise was unable to turn what would have been an inning-ending double play, and Rose scored from third to tie the game at 1-1.
Pieters went 3-for-4 with a double and a stolen base and had nearly half of Eugene’s seven hits. Stahel went 2-for-5 with a double and RBI for Boise.
With the win, Eugene improved to 2-0 on the year and will have a chance to sweep Boise (0-2) when the two clubs play the series finale at 5:01 p.m. on Sunday.
Follow Jarrid on Twitter @jarrid_denney