Crabs’ woes continue in 5–2 loss

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 2nd, 2010 at 2:50 am,
with photos by Jay Wetherill

Steve Vogt flys out to left field.

By Jonathan Gantt

Char­lotte Stone Crabs

The Char­lotte Stone Crabs suf­fered a 5–2 loss to the Braden­ton Maraud­ers on a rainy Thurs­day night at Char­lotte Sports Park.

The Stone Crabs fell to 1–7 in the sec­ond half of the sea­son, a far cry from their FSL-best 43–26 record in the first half.

Char­lotte starter Shane Dyer (4−4) pitched 6 1/3 innings and gave up four runs on five hits and two walks. After giv­ing up a com­bined six total earned runs through his first seven starts, Dyer has now allowed nine runs in his last two starts. He nar­rowly missed his eighth qual­ity start in nine tries after reliever Mar­quis Flem­ing allowed an inher­ited run­ner to score from first base in the sev­enth inning.

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The Maraud­ers (5−2) started the scor­ing early in the top of the first inning when Dyer strug­gled with his con­trol. He walked the lead­off bat­ter, gave up a bunt sin­gle and then hit Eric Fryer on the left side of the face when he squared around to bunt. Calvin Ander­son then lined a sin­gle to right field that landed just past the out­stretched glove of Reid Fronk and scored two runs to give the Maraud­ers the lead.

Starter Shane Dyer had a rough first inning, putting the first three bat­ters on base.

The Stone Crabs got one back in the bot­tom of the fourth when Stephen Vogt knocked a sac­ri­fice fly to deep left with the bases loaded, and then tied the score in the bot­tom of the fifth on a strange baserun­ning play that worked in the Crabs favor. After Anthony Scelfo hit a dou­ble off the wall in right-center field, Isa­ias Velasquez rounded too far off first base after hit­ting a sin­gle to left field and drew a throw back to the bag. Velasquez man­aged to avoid being tagged while Scelfo took off for home and slid around the tag to even the score.

But Braden­ton fought back and plated another run in the top of the sixth to take the lead back. Austin McClune reached on a con­tro­ver­sial force out that looked like a dou­ble play and even­tu­ally scored on a ground­out that would have ended the inning.

Dyer recorded an out in the sixth inning for Char­lotte but left the game with a Rob­bie Gross­man on first base after throw­ing 90 pitches with 57 for strikes. Flem­ing came into the game to relieve Dyer hav­ing allowed just one of 11 inher­ited run­ners to score on the sea­son and record­ing outs for 18 of the 20 first bat­ters he faced, but he gave up a lined sin­gle to his first bat­ter, hit the next and gave up a sac­ri­fice fly to allow Gross­man to score. Flem­ing gave up an unearned run in the top of the eighth inning to cap his line at 1 2/3 innings pitched.

The teams will con­tinue the series tomor­row at Char­lotte Sports Park with first pitch at 7:05 p.m. Lefty Matt Moore (3−8, 4.97) will start for Char­lotte against right-hander Brian Leach (3−4, 4.14) for Bradenton.

Friday’s game will fea­ture the Stone Crabs Slug­ger­i­taville beer-tasting event with an all-you-can-eat buf­fet and more than 20 beers to sam­ple, includ­ing Sierra Nevada, Samuel Smith’s, Shiner, Har­poon, South Hamp­ton, Mag­n­ers, Fly­ing Dog, Per­oni, Leinenkugel and more. Tick­ets for the event are $30, but spots are lim­ited, so call 941–206-HITS (4487) to reserve your ticket.

CRAB NOTES: The mid-season ros­ter moves con­tinue as right-handed reliever Justin Gar­cia became the lat­est player to make his return to the Stone Crabs. Gar­cia was sent down from Triple-A Durham after two appear­ances with the Bulls and 13 relief appear­ances with Double-A Mont­gomery to start the sea­son. On the year, he has posted a 2–2 record with a 5.23 ERA (19er/32.2ip) with both clubs. The Stone Crabs have wel­comed back for­mer play­ers Shawn O’Malley, Matt Fields and Rayner Oliv­eros after Henry Wrigley and Josh Satow were pro­moted to Double-A.

Bradenton-Stone Crabs Box Score 070110

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