Vermont takes rubber game from Lowell 6-0

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The easy thing to write about would be the mistakes the Lowell Spinners made in Thursday night’s game. Yes, they made five errors, two of them in a second inning that got messy for the home team. But the fact remains they only collected five hits themselves. Vermont’s pitching was good as three hurlers combined for those hits. They recored 10 strikeouts, and as Spinners Manager Iggy Suarez said afterwards, “we did not swing the bats well, not putting quality at bats together”.

Give credit to Lake Monsters pitchers Parker Dunshee, Brian Howard and Oscar Tovar. They did their jobs and came up with shut down innings after their team gave them runs and the lead. Vermont comes to Lowell and takes two out of three from the Spinners winning Thursday night 6-0. The blanking was the Lake Monsters sixth of the season.

The second inning was the killer frame for Lowell. Two errors sandwiched around three base hits led to four runs being placed on the board by Vermont.

After the first two men reached via hits against Spinners starter Jake Thompson, Payton Squier hit a ground ball to second baseman Tanner Nishioka who fielded the ball cleanly but his throw to SS Yomar Valentin was not secured and one run scored 1-0 Vermont.

Mickey McDonald reloaded the bases with a single to left. Jarrett Costa brought home the second run with a bases loaded walk, then the killer. Will Toffey hit a fly ball to left that would have at least been a sac fly, however, the ball was dropped by Spinners LF Marino Campana and the third and fourth runs would cross the plate. 4-0 after two.

The Spinners never recovered from that inning and they had only two runners in scoring position all game and left three men on base for the night. Compare that with Vermont who was 2-16 with RISP and left 12 on base for the game you get the idea that the Lake Monsters on the hill tonight were on their game.

There was a couple of brights spots for Lowell. Yoan Aybar had a two hits game to extend his hitting streak to six, as did Raiwinson Lameda for the second straight night. Plus, the Spinners pitching debut of Brendan Nail, the left-hander who the Red Sox found in the Cape Cod League went two innings and showed a live fastball and good curve. After the game, Suarez said they are going to get Nail some innings down the stretch. He does not have a role in the pen but will throw.

The Manager talked about his team after the game. He said the team will keep working to get better. He and his coaching staff are not giving up on them and there are still games to be played starting with a weekend series in Tri-City.

Thompson takes the loss and is now 0-2. Howard, the second Vermont pitcher, gets the win because Dunshee only went four Thursday night is now 1-1. Vermont’s hitting starts were Aaron Arruda with a 3-5 contest. Toffey had a two hit game himself.

On to Troy, NY for Lowell, and it gets started on Friday night.