Coming off a blowout victory on Tuesday night, the Emeralds (31-26) hoped to again silence the Aquasox (27-31) early and steamroll into another easy win.
Everett had other ideas, evening the series with a 5-1 victory on Wednesday night.
Southpaw Jack Choate got the call on the mound, and shut down his first three batters 1-2-3.
It wasn’t his finest outing on the mound, but he did enough to keep this a close game — he pitched 5.0 innings with three hits, one earned run and six strikeouts.
Everett’s Michael Morales — a righty — started the game for the Aquasox, and bested Choate’s numbers with 6.0 IP, seven hits, seven punch-outs and one earned run.
Morales (7-1) tallied another win onto his resume, while Emeralds’ righty reliever Will Bednar (0-1) took the loss.
Choate’s early success took a major gutshot, as he hung a slow, breaking ball over the middle, which righty hitter Bill Knight made short work of. Knight smashed the errant pitch deep to left field to break the tie and score the first run of the game.
Choate worked through two RISP in the third, which was likely to bring a close to his day, as he tallied 51 pitches until that point. However, Choate trotted out yet again at the top of the fourth and shut down the Aquasox 1-2-3.
The Emeralds finally tacked on their first run in the bottom of the fourth.
Onil Perez sent a liner into deep right-center, which was dropped on a dive from Right Fielder RJ Schreck, and in a short at-bat Andrew Kachel singled him home to tie the game at one apiece.
Choate returned for the fifth, and proceeded to mow down more batters, and picked off Axel Sanchez at first to finish the inning.
Bednar relieved Choate at the beginning of the sixth inning, and struggled to build on Choate’s dominance, and loaded the bases with two outs in the inning.
On just the next pitch, Bednar sent one into the dirt and past Perez behind the dish, which allowed Everett to easily score its second run and take the lead once again.
Everett’s Morales pitched a gem of a game into the sixth, which was almost ruined with Perez in scoring position with just one out in the inning. Morales dealt for the rest of the frame.
After the lone mishap, Bednar controlled his stuff enough to shut down Everett’s bats.
However, Bednar exited in the seventh to make way for another southpaw — Matt Mikulski.
Mikulski’s subpar pitching broke the game wide open for Everett.
The lefty walked three of his first four batters to load the bases at the top of the eighth, and with just one out, the situation spelled trouble for Eugene.
Freuddy Bautista crushed one to the warning track in straightaway center, over Quinn McDaniel’s head for a two-RBI double. The inning only got worse in the next at-bat, as Gabriel Moncada lined an RBI-single into center to score the Aquasox’s fifth run.
That ended up being the insurance that Everett needed to secure the win, 5-1.
The two squads run it back for the third time tomorrow night at the same time.
