Beloit Scores Three in the Eighth, Tops Cedar Rapids 3-1 on Opening Night
Beloit, WI - In a game that stayed scoreless until the bottom of the eighth inning, home runs by Joe Mack and Torin Montgomery lifted Beloit ahead 3-0, a lead it would never lose in a 3-1 Opening Day win over Cedar Rapids. In a game dominated by pitching, Beloit’s
Beloit, WI - In a game that stayed scoreless until the bottom of the eighth inning, home runs by Joe Mack and Torin Montgomery lifted Beloit ahead 3-0, a lead it would never lose in a 3-1 Opening Day win over Cedar Rapids.
In a game dominated by pitching, Beloit’s Karson Milbrandt and Cedar Rapids’ Andrew Morris went toe-to-toe across the first four and a half innings.
Milbrandt went five scoreless innings, allowing just one walk and two hits while striking out five. His counterpart, Andrew Morris, spun four scoreless for the Kernels allowing three hits, while adding six strikeouts, including two back-to-back to get him out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the fourth inning.
When the game was turned over to the bullpen in the bottom of the fifth inning, the score read 0-0.
It stayed that way until the bottom of the eighth. A.J. Labas came on in relief of Morris and went two scoreless frames, and after Jordan Carr threw a scoreless seventh, it was tied 0-0 with the Sky Carp coming to bat in the bottom of the eighth.
With Carr still on the mound, Mack crushed a one-out solo home run over the wall in right field to open the scoring and put Beloit ahead 1-0. After a Yiddi Cappe single put another Sky Carp on base, Montgomery blasted a two-run homer to left-center to lift Beloit ahead 3-0 headed to the top of the ninth.
Trailing by three entering the ninth, Gabriel Gonzalez singled to put the leadoff hitter on, Gonzalez went 2-4 in his Kernels debut. After a flyout, a Ricardo Olivar walk put two on with one out for Jose Salas, who put the Kernels on the board with a single through the left side. Now down 3-1, Cedar Rapids had the tying run on with just one out, but Beloit got the next batter to bounce into a 6-4-3 double play to end the game and give the Sky Carp a 3-1 opening day victory.
The loss marks the Kernels' first opening day loss since 2019. Cedar Rapids looks to grab its first win of the season tomorrow at 1:05, with John Klein taking the mound opposite Ike Buxton.