Captains Rally Falls Short in Loss to Loons

The Great Lakes Loons went deep three times and a 7th-inning Captains rally came up short to give the Loons an 8-6 win Saturday night, their second straight victory against Lake County.

Both teams got on the board with lead off solo home runs early. Francisco Mejia hit his fourth home run in the last 5 games in the 2nd and Daniel Fields hit one to the right field lawn to tie the game at 1 in the 4th.

Captains starter Casey Shane had a short leash, not making it out of the 4th inning.  After giving up the home run to Fields,  he was pulled after putting runners on 1st and 2nd with one out.  Reliever Jared Robinson came in and gave up a 3-run shot to Jake Henson to put the Loons up 4-1.

The Loons got to Robinson again in the 7th and blew the game open.  Cristian Gomez had an RBI double to the gap in left center, Logan Landon drove in a run with a single up the middle, and Gage Green put a ribbon on it with a mammoth 2-run shot to dead center that put Great Lakes up 8-1.

The Captains responded by scoring 5 runs while batting around in the bottom of the 7th.  Willi Castro and Tyler Krieger opened up the inning with back-to-back hits.  Krieger’s single extended his hitting streak to 21 games.

Connor Marabell then hit a sacrifice fly, and reliever Alex Hermeling walked three straight Captains to walk in a run and end his night.

Yonathan Mendoza hit a ground ball to first against new reliever Adam Bray that went right through first baseman Eric Meza‘s glove, scoring 2 more for Lake County on the error.  Nathan Lukes rounded out the scoring with a single that cut the Loons’ lead to 8-6.

The Captains put runners at second and third with 1 out in the 8th, but failed to score.  In the 9th, Angel German came in for the Loons worked out of a 2-out double from Castro to earn his first save of the season.

With the loss, Lake County drops to 36-26 on the year, and remains 1.5 games out of first place South Bend and a half game behind West Michigan for second place and the 1st half Wild Card playoff berth.  The first half of the season ends June 19th.