TROY –fans packed into Joe Bruno Stadium Tuesday evening for the final battle in a 3 game set between the Tri-City ValleyCats and the Vermont Lake Monsters.
The ValleyCats, who won the first two games of the series by a combined score of 19-6, were looking to complete the sweep in front of their home crowd. Presumably the Lake Monsters were simply trying to roll out of NY on a positive note before heading back to cow country.
As an added bonus, every fan in attendance received this LIT ValleyCats team poster.
The Lake Monsters would strike first in the top of the 2nd, when catcher Miguel Guzman hit a home run to put Vermont up 1-0. In that same inning, shortstop Eli White hit a triple, scoring two more runs for the Lake Monsters, increasing their lead to 2-0. The inning got increasingly worse for Tri-City as the Lake Monsters increased their lead to 5 off a Miguel Mercades home run, which also scored Eli White.
In the bottom of the 3rd the ValleyCats began to make some noise with the sticks, as catcher Jake Rogers doubled on a line drive to center. Then Rodgers scored on a two run homer from Rodrigo Ayarza with only one out in the inning. Unfortunately, that’s all the ValleyCats would get, with a score of 5-2 entering the 4th.
After not allowing anything in the top half of the inning, Chuckie Robinson doubled with one out. This effort was to no avail, as he did not make it home before the inning was over.
In the 5th, the ValleyCats would once again take a crack at that 5-2 Lake Monsters lead. After Jake Rogers was walked, Tyler Wolfe would double, scoring Rogers. With a sacrifice bunt from Rodrigo Ayarza, Tyler Wolfe would come into score. When all was said and done, the ValleyCats had cut the Vermont lead to just 1, with 5-4 on the big board heading into the 6th.
With a 1-2-3 top half of the 6th the ValleyCats looked sharp heading into the bottom half of the inning. After Ronnie Dawson walked with 2 outs, first baseman Taylor Jones homered to give the ValleyCats the lead for the first time in the game (6-5). For Jones it was his 3rd straight game in which he hit a dinger.
No one would score after the 6th, and by the time the fat lady sang, the ValleyCats had completed the sweep with a 6-5 victory.
The ValleyCats will take Wednesday off to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a team, before hitting the road for a 3 game set with the Connecticut Tigers on Thursday.
