Eugene (31-28) took its second-straight loss on Thursday, as the offense didn’t show and the bullpen failed to help matters.
Lo and behold, Friday matched Thursday — and Wednesday for that matter — in an uncanny fashion. The Emeralds’ bats were ice cold once again, while the pitching failed to aid that struggle by preventing runs.
Everett (29-31) didn’t hit exceptional, but it did just enough to get a comfortable 4-1 win.
Taking the mound on Friday night was southpaw Seth Lonsway, who hasn’t tallied a win yet in June, but has forced a .216 opposing BA in the month.
Lonsway pitched respectably, but still took the loss in this one to take his record to 2-3 on the season. He pitched 6.0 innings with five hits, five strikeouts, but earned two.
Everett’s Brandyn Garcia added onto his perfect record on the season, as his 6.0 innings with no earned runs and nine punchouts gave him his fifth win of the season to bolster his record to 5-0.
Lonsway got started as soon as the contest did, as he forced a groundout on his first pitch of the evening.
On the third pitch, he got his second out, which set him and the Emeralds up for an astoundingly quick 1-2-3 inning to begin Friday’s contest — which happened on another groundout with just Lonsway’s fourth pitch.
After another 1-2-3 inning in the second, the AquaSox managed their first hit in the top of the third, but it would come to no avail for Everett.
Lonsway’s ability to generate weak contact off Everett’s bats early on fueled Eugene’s incredible defensive effort.
The first three innings demonstrated that the Ems still had a lot of work to do if they were to reclaim the offensive dominance displayed on Tuesday. The problem was that the Emeralds failed to string together multiple hits, which prevented any scoring.
Aside from a few small hiccups, Lonsway dealt and kept the AquaSox off the bases as much as possible.
Until Freuddy Batista had something to say about it.
Out of nowhere, the AquaSox put together their first string of hits, as a Caleb Cali double set Batista up perfectly to make his mark.
Batista launched one into the Eugene night, deep to left field, to open the scoring. Two scored on that blast, and the Emeralds fell down two in a game that they controlled initially.
The Emeralds responded immediately, tacking on their first run of the night as soon as they strung together multiple hits in a row.
Zach Morgan’s single resulted in an errant throw from Bill Knight sent him to third, and Tanner O’Tremba wasted no time in the next at-bat to knock in an RBI single.
Righty Cody Tucker relieved Lonsway in the seventh, and continued Lonsway’s pitching display by striking out three of the four batters he faced in the inning.
Tucker dealt until his outing took a major hit when he gave up a deep bomb to left off the bat of Jared Sundstrom, which drove in two more for Everett.
The lead slowly became unsurmountable for the Emeralds, especially without any positive offense.
And, as the game wound down, the Emeralds whimpered to the end of Friday’s ballgame.
As Friday turns to Saturday, the Ems look to end their three-game skid and possibly start stringing together runs.
