COURTESY OF THE ALTOONA CURVE:
Curve Outlast SeaWolves And Earn Fourth Straight Win
Altoona improved to 3-1 in extra-inning games this season.
ERIE, Pa. – Sammy Siani drove in Tsung-Che Cheng to lead off the 11th inning and Jack Carey tossed a scoreless bottom half of the inning to secure a 4-3 win for the Curve on Saturday night at UPMC Park.
After the teams each scored their placed runner in the tenth inning, Altoona was able to hold the line in the bottom of the 11th inning. With Carlos Mendoza placed at second to begin the final inning, Carey got Chris Meyers to fly out to center field and move the tying run to third and then got Jake Holton to hit a groundball to short where Cheng cut down the game’s tying run at the plate. Carey struck out Brady Allen to secure the fourth straight win for the Curve.
Braxton Ashcraft turned in his second brilliant outing on the team’s two-week road trip with 5.1 innings on Saturday night. Ashcraft struck out a pair in the first, second and fifth inning, stranding a man in scoring position in four of the frames. Ashcraft’s lone run allowed came in the sixth when Erie’s Hao-Yu Lee rocked a leadoff solo homer, though Ashcraft retired Chris Meyers to finish his outing. Ashcraft struck out eight, walked a pair and allowed just five hits in his outing.
Altoona built a 2-0 lead through five innings. In the first, the Curve used three straight hits with two outs, capped off by a Sammy Siani single to right to plate the game’s first run off Carlos Pena. Kervin Pichardo added a solo homer in the fourth off the SeaWolves starter.
Erie drew even with a solo homer from Lee in the sixth off Ashcraft and a game-tying double from Gage Workman off J.C. Flowers in the seventh drew the game even. Flowers tossed 1.2 innings in relief following Ashcraft and struck out a pair.
Anthony Solometo tossed a scoreless eighth inning with a pair of strikeouts in his second relief outing of the season. Solometo needed just 13 pitches to work through his inning.
With his two-hit day, Seth Beer has now reached base safely in 16 of his last 17 games for the Curve. Siani had his first three-hit game with Altoona and drove in two runs in the victory.
Altoona will wrap up their six-game series against the Erie SeaWolves, Double-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, on Sunday night at 6:05 p.m. with RHP Po-Yu Chen taking the ball for Altoona against LHP Wilkel Hernandez for Erie.
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