It may not have been as wild as Monday night’s MLB Home Run Derby in Miami, but the game between the Glens Falls Dragons and the Saugerties Stallions had plenty of fireworks, ending with the Dragons taking it by a final score of 15-12.
The Stallions quickly found themselves up 5-0 at the end of two innings thanks to a trio of big hits from Jack Gonzalez, Tyler Kelder and Andrew Taft that created a rocky beginning for Glens Falls starter Alex Phillips.
Glens Falls, however, didn’t roll over. They chipped away at the deficit, scoring a pair of runs in the third and headed into the bottom of the fourth trailing 6-2. This is when the game turned a complete 180. The Dragons sent 11 batters to the plate in the fourth after Stallions starter Jason Antalek was surprisingly pulled after just three innings. The inning began with three straight walks, and then Anthony Butler plated one of them with an RBI single with an additional tally coming in on an error. Nick Jacques then hit a sacrifice fly to make it 6-5. Two batters later, it was Matt Hamel coming through off Matt Jones, the second pitcher of the inning, with an RBI single to tie the game, but the Dragons weren’t done there.
Some luck came through as Jones threw two wild pitches to allow a runner to score and give Glens Falls a 7-6 lead after they had trailed 5-0. They tacked on one more run that inning to make it 8-6 at the end of four.
“We showed a heart, had great at-bats,” Dragons head coach Cameron Curler said. “Offensively we executed and guys came through when they needed to, also to keep that lead for us after we gave it back.”
Saugerties responded two innings later as they scored three runs in the sixth inning and led to them re-taking the lead, this time 9-8. Glens Falls responded in a big way again, with five runs in the bottom of the sixth to give them a 13-9 advantage. Jared Drizin began that rally with an RBI single to tie it at nine, then Butler walked with the bases loaded. Jacques came through big again, this time with a two-run single, and the rally was capped off by Brian Uliana with an RBI single. Uliana went 4-5 on the night with three RBIs and two runs scored.
“I know the score was kind of a barnburner, a lot of hits, a lot of runs for both teams,” Uliana said. “We just kept fighting and fighting and did what we could to get as many runs as we could at the end of the game.”
The Dragons would need every run they could get as Saugerties made it 13-12 in the seventh inning, but the Dragons plated a pair of insurance runs in the bottom of the eighth to make it 15-12.
The Dragons’ pitching staff was a big part of the game due to the clutch relief pitching of Peter Masterson who took over for Phillips in the fourth inning and pitched 4.1 innings out of the bullpen, allowing most of the team’s bullpen corps to take a break for the night.
“We only extended two guys, and I feel like our pitching staff is pretty deep and they’ve been doing a pretty good job. They’ve kept us in all these ballgames,” Curler said.
The Dragons improve to 10-21 on the season and the Stallions fall to 14-16. These two teams will play again on Tuesday in Saugerties, and start time is set for 7 p.m. The Dragons will return home on Thursday for a rivalry game against the Albany Dutchmen. That game will also start at 7 p.m.
