Crab rally falls short, 4–3

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 18th, 2010 at 1:18 am

By Grant McAuley

Char­lotte Stone Crabs Broadcaster

An attempt at late-inning hero­ics by the Char­lotte Stone Crabs fell short Sat­ur­day night at Space Coast Sta­dium as the Bre­vard County Man­a­tees held on for a 4–3 victory.

The Crabs have now lost three in a row and five of their last seven.

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It was a night marked by great pitch­ing, with a pair of young left-handers lock­ing up for the sec­ond time this season.

Dan Merklinger (4−4) tossed eight score­less innings to notch the vic­tory for the Man­a­tees. He allowed just three hits on the night, and only one after the sec­ond inning. The south­paw struck out nine Char­lotte hitters.

Stone Crabs starter Matt Moore threw well, but was unable to keep the Man­a­tees off the board in the fourth inning. It was in that frame that Bre­vard County picked up its only three hits of the night, adding them to a walk and an error by Moore to put together a three-run frame.

Moore (4−9) lasted six innings, strik­ing out a season-high 11 men for the fourth time this season.

Bre­vard County added what proved to be valu­able insur­ance in the bot­tom of the eighth. Con­sec­u­tive walks by reliever Mar­quis Flem­ing to lead off the inning set the stage for an extra Man­a­tee run. Scott Kreiger lifted a sac­ri­fice fly that plated Steve Braun to make it a 4–0 game. That run would prove to be the difference.

The Stone Crabs plated three ninth-inning runs against hard-throwing right-hander Jeremy Jef­fress. Tim Beck­ham, Stephen Vogt, Greg Sex­ton, Matt Spring and Anthony Scelfo all col­lected sin­gles — Vogt and Scelfo as pinch-hitters —  to account for the three runs. Jef­fress was finally able to end it by strik­ing out Chris Mur­rill with the go-ahead run on base.

The pair­ing of Merklinger and Moore last bat­tled on May 22, in a game where nei­ther man would fac­tor in the deci­sion. That con­test went 15 innings and was even­tu­ally won by the Stone Crabs.

Merklinger and the Man­a­tees were able to gain some mea­sure of revenge for the four-game sweep suf­fered in that prior meet­ing at Char­lotte Sports Park, tak­ing 3-out-of-4 to close out this series.

Char­lotte returns home today to bat­tle the Day­ton Cubs in a four-game series. Shane Dyer (4−6, 3.31) will bat­tle a pitcher yet to be named for Day­tona. First pitch is sched­uled for 5:35 p.m.

(Box score was not avail­able late Sat­ur­day. Go to

http://charlotte.stonecrabs.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=t2730&t=g_box&gid=2010_07_17_chaafa_breafa_1)

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