BURLINGTON, VT --- So far in 2011 the Vermont Lake Monsters have been the "Rally" Monsters has they have come-from-behind to win in six of their first nine victories. Sunday afternoon at historic Centennial Field Vermont pulled out its biggest rally of the season as they scored four times in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Tri-City ValleyCats 7-6 in New York-Penn League action.

Lake Monsters trailed 6-3 with one out in the bottom of the ninth when Jordan Tripp struckout, but reached first base on a wild pitch and Xavier Macklin followed with a walk to put runners at first and second still with one out.

Chad Lewis grounded a 2-1 pitch into centerfield to score Tripp to cut the lead to two and Chad Oberacker then laced a 2-2 delievery through the left side scoring Macklin to make it 6-5. Tri-City reliever Juan Rosario struckout Jacob Tanis for the second out, but Diomedes Lopez tied the game with a line drive single on a 2-2 pitch to right scoring Lewis.

Travis Smink relieved Rosario and walked Aaron Shipman to load the bases before quickly getting ahead of Sean Jamieson 0-2. But Jamieson fouled the next two pitches hard foul down the leftfield line before drilling a game-ending single to leftcenter scoring Oberacker with the winning run.

Tri-City had built a 4-0 lead with a run in the second and three more in the third before Vermont was able to cut the deficit to 5-3 in the bottom of the fifth with two runs on a wild pitch and Lewis RBI groundout. The ValleyCats scored their sixth run in the seventh on a sacrifice fly from Matt Duffy, who was 1-for-3 with a double.

Vermont starter Seth Frankoff left after just 2 1/3 innings and allowed four runs on five hits, but three Lake Monster relievers combined to allowed two runs on six hits over the final 6 2/3 innings to keep Vermont close enough for the comeback. Logan Chitwood (1-0) had a strikeout in a scoreless ninth for the win.

Lewis was 2-for-5 with two runs and two RBI, while Tripp scored twice to increase his league-leading run total to 17 (has scored at least one run in 10 straight games). Miles Hamblin was 4-for-5 with three runs scored for Tri-City (6-10), while Rosario (0-1) was charged with all four ninth inning runs for the loss.

Vermont (10-5), which has won five of its last six games, heads out on a five-game roadtrip with two at Tri-City and a three-game series at Brooklyn before they return to Centennial Field next Saturday, July 9th.The roadtrip opens at Tri-City on Monday starting at 6:00 pm.