Danville Powers Past Princeton in Series Finale

DANVILLE, Va. - The Danville Braves won consecutive games for the first time since July 20-22 with a 6-2 win Sunday night against the Princeton Rays. The victory gave the D-Braves a series win over the Rays and helped Danville finish the season series against Princeton with a winning record for the first time since 2016.
Cody Birdsong led Danville with a 3-for-4 day at the plate, with Mitch Calandra going 2-for-4 with 2 RBI. Starting pitched Lisandro Santos impressed in his Danville debut, going five scoreless innings with five strikeouts.
Brett Wisely led off the game for Princeton with a single, advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt and made it to third on a wild pitch. Santos buckled down and struck out the next two batters to strand him there.
For the second straight game, Danville started the game off with scoring in the first inning. Garrett Saunders hit a one-out single, stole second base and then later scored on a fielding error during Bryce Ball's at bat with two outs on the board to give Danville a 1-0 advantage.
The Rays put another baserunner on third in the second frame but again couldn't get him across home. They one-upped themselves in the third by putting runners on second and third with two outs but were once again stymied by Santos, who got Diego Infante to groundout to third to end the inning and maintain the lead.
Danville finally got back on the scoreboard in the fourth inning, with Bryce Ball hitting his 10^th double of the year and advancing to third on a flyout. With two outs on board, Birdsong slapped an RBI single to center field to extend the lead to 2-0. The D-Braves threatened to add more in the fifth inning, with a bases loaded situation and Ball up to the plate, but he struck out to end the frame.
Reliever Zach Daniels took the mound in the sixth inning and Princeton was finally able to make something happen, putting two runs on the board with a two-run single to knot it all up. The tie wouldn't hold for long, with Birdsong scoring in the bottom half of the frame on an RBI triple from Calandra. Calandra scored two pitches later on a Brandon Chapman RBI single to restore a two-run advantage.
After a 1-2-3 seventh inning for the Rays courtesy of Danville reliever Albinson Volquez, Danville loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the seventh. Birdsong smacked a ball to second base, where a fielding error from the Rays allowed him to reach safely and Saunders to score and make it 5-2. Calandra followed him up with another RBI, this time on a single to right that brought home Ball and made it 6-2.
Princeton put a runner on second in the top of the eighth but that was as close as the Rays came to scoring any more runs in the ballgame. Marrick Crouse put down the side in the ninth to end the game.
Danville will turn its attention to the Bristol Pirates, who begin their only three-game trip to Danville on Monday night.