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Spikes let up late lead to Scrappers

UNIVERSITY PARK — For the first six innings of Tuesday night’s New York-Penn baseball game between State College and Mahoning Valley, the Spikes were rolling along with a two-run lead and things couldn’t have been any better.

However, as fate would have it for the Spikes, as good as things looked in the early going, they went south over the final three innings as the Scrappers rallied to put up a big crooked number en route to a 7-4 win.

Having trouble scoring runs thus far in the season, State College wasted no time at all getting on the board against Zach Draper and the Scrappers.

Following a strikeout of Brady Whalen, Delvin Perez singled to center and Wood Myers followed with a double to right, chasing Perez to third.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Joe Gomez smacked a double just inside the right field line, chasing both Perez and Myers across the dish with the game’s first two runs.

“It seems like we have been getting better and better (swinging the bats) as the games go on,” Spikes manager Joe Kruzel said. “Tonight we swung the bats better and we also had some opportunities early on the expand our lead.”

Unable to do little or nothing with the offerings from Spike starter Jake Dahlbert, the Scrappers made some noise against State College reliever Chris Holba with a little help from the Spikes’ defense.

Elvis Perez led off the seventh with a single to center. One out later Jason Rodriguez was safe on a throwing error by State College third sacker Edwin Figuera, Perez to third and Rodriguez to second.

Tre Gantt made the miscue hurt when he delivered a two-run double to center, chasing Perez and Rodriguez across the dish to tie the game at two-all.

Troy Montemayor replaced Holba on the bump for the Spikes, and Tyler Freeman greeted Montemayor with a two-run double to center to give the Scrappers a 4-2 lead, a lead they would eventually extend to 7-2.

“You have to give a lot of credit to them because they took advantage of that error,” Kruzel said. “They kept expanding it and expanding it and wound up throwing a seven-spot on us. We had them with one out and just a guy on first and with a ground ball, the next thing you know seven runs scored. But again we had some opportunities to score some more runs and in the end, we didn’t get it done and they did.”

The Spikes did generate a little noise of their own in the eighth inning when they loaded the bases, but could only muster one run as the Scrappers put out the fire with a 6-4-3 double play.

Continuing to grind and battle, the Spikes inched a little closer in the ninth with a single run, but it was too little, too late and the Scrappers were able to escape with the win.

“We also had some opportunities late in the game with the bases loaded in the eighth and then first and second in the ninth but we could only get one (run) in,” Kruzel said. But the bottom line is that you have to appreciate the effort and work these guys are putting in to score some runs. Unfortunately tonight we weren’t able to expand that lead early on and then it kind of got away from us in that one inning. We brought the tying run to the plate in both the eighth and ninth and if we can continue to put ourselves in those situations, we are going to have opportunities to capitalize on them. Tonight we didn’t, but the good sign from it is that we were getting more and more guys on base.”

The two teams conclude the 3-game series tonight with a single game beginning at 7:05 p.m.

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