The Lehigh Valley IronPigs (7-8) reached the halfway point of the six-game road trip on Thursday night against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (12-5) from PNC Field. Lehigh Valley pitcher Mick Abel (1-0, 6.75 ERA) was on the mound against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s Will Warren (1-0, 8.68 ERA).
After two scoreless innings, the RailRiders struck first in the bottom of the third inning when shortstop Caleb Durbin hit an RBI double to left field for a 1-0 lead. Then, Everson Pereria cleared the bases hitting Abel’s fastball for a three-run home run over the wall at center field for a 4-0 lead. Moving ahead to the bottom of the sixth inning, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre second baseman Josh VanMeter hit a two-run double to center field extending the RailRiders lead to 6-0.
At the top of the seventh inning, Lehigh Valley had runners on first and second base when David Dahl hit an RBI single to left field cutting the RailRiders lead down to 6-1. Scott Kingery was next to bat. He hit Josh Maciejewski’s changeup for a three-run home run over the wall at left field which made it a two-run game 6-4 in favor of the RailRiders.
However, the RailRiders got two of those runs back. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Everson Pereria hit his second home run of the night over the wall at left-center field which made it 7-4. In the bottom of the eighth inning, a bases-loaded walk by Lehigh Valley pitcher Tyler McKay to Luis González made it 8-4 RailRiders.
Clayton Andrews came in to pitch for the RailRiders at the top of the ninth inning. He got the final three outs of the game and the IronPigs lost to the RailRiders by the final score of 8-4.
The loss went to Lehigh Valley pitcher Mick Abel (4 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 7 K) throwing 89 pitches, of which 54 were strikes, and the win went to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre pitcher Will Warren (6.0 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 7 K) throwing 83 pitches, of which 52 were strikes.
The IronPigs will look to tie the series against the RailRiders on Friday at 6:35 pm on MiLB.TV. Purchase IronPigs tickets for the 2024 season today on StubHub and Viagogo. Also, pick up IronPigs merchandise today at Fanatics.com.
