Indians take down Birds in Carolina League epic
On a day that could only have been made more indescribable and preposterous by one thing, at least the rain held off.
Just shy of 13 full months after playing the second-longest game in Carolina League history, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans etched their names into the top spot in the circuit's record book in endurance. Along with their counterparts from Kinston, the Pelicans played the longest contest in the illustrious history of the legendary Class A league with a 23-inning, six-hour and 27-minute affair that ended on Frawley's walk-off single to give Kinston a 3-2 Sunday win and a three-game series victory.
Like last season's 20-inning May 19 loss to the Dash in Winston-Salem in the second game of a day-night doubleheader, and like nearly all other unexpectedly historic days in sports, Sunday appeared pedestrian and normal as late as the final regulation inning. Continuing a theme of their crucial late-half series in Kinston, the Indians and Pelicans went back-and-forth with Myrtle Beach's early 1-0 lead turning into a 2-1 deficit on the strength of a Perez homer in the fifth and an RBI single by Justin Toole scoring Perez in the bottom of the seventh.
Myrtle Beach All-Star starter Joe Wieland was as superb as his new prefix distinction would suggest on Sunday. The right-hander struck out nine and got back to his walk-free ways, allowing only Perez's homer to bring a run across on four total hits in his six innings of work. Kinston's righty Brett Brach matched Wieland through the day, though, allowing just one Pelicans run on three hits with three Ks and a walk in his own six frames.
With a lead in-hand after their seventh against Pelicans reliever Kennil Gomez, the Indians turned to their All-Star closer Preston Guilmet and his perfect 14-for-14 mark in save conversions in 2011.
And that's when the day, for all intents and purposes, truly began.
Guilmet blew his first save of the year as the Pelicans loaded the bases by ripping back-to-back one-out singles and getting a two-out walk by Leury Garcia. Down to their final bat, it was Hilligoss who smoked a liner through the hole between third and short and into left field. David Paisano scored the game-tying run, but with a shot at giving the Pelicans the lead, Santiago Chirino was cut down by Kinston left fielder Tyler Holt whose strike to the plate found the glove of Perez, a tag of Chirino, and a 2-2 score intact and headed for extras.
In one of the first of a string of oddities that would come to define the contest, the Pelicans lost their designated hitter through some lineup wrangling in the top of the ninth. Jared Hoying came in to pinch hit for second baseman Andres James with runners at first and second and, after his flyout to right advanced Paisano to third before Garcia's walk, was removed from the order. Chirino, the day's DH for Myrtle Beach, was inserted into the Pelicans' defensive alignment as the second baseman, thus removing the extra hitter from the visitors' nine. Two innings later, when the pitcher's spot came up in the order--like something out of a National League playbook--Pelicans manager Jason Wood grabbed the last bullet off his bench in catcher Vinny DiFazio to pinch hit. When DiFazio struck out, Wood kept him in the lineup, putting the ordinary backstop at first base and removing Jared Bolden whose spot in the cleanup position in the order, where Bolden himself had entered as a pinch runner in place of starter Chris McGuiness in the eighth, thus came open for Pelicans pitchers.
PERHAPS the most astounding thing about Myrtle Beach and Kinston's protracted battle wasn't that it went for so long at all but that it went for so long scoreless. Following Hilligoss's RBI single in the ninth, a combined 103 at-bats passed before the start of Kinston's triumphant 23rd. Pelicans pitchers combined to strike out an astounding 32 Indians hitters with 17 of those Ks coming in extra innings.
Pitch after pitch, out after out, inning after inning, the zeroes racked up on the Grainger Stadium scoreboard. In fact, at one point, the right-center field linescore lit up with ten zeroes strung together horizontally on each line representing the 11th through 20th innings before it turned over to a blank slate to start its final countdown. At some point in the middle teens, home plate umpire Kiff Kinkead motioned for the Grainger Stadium lights to be turned on to artificially aid a game that began under a hot June North Carolina sun at 1:30 in the afternoon.
Of the six Pelicans relievers to take part in the game, three set season or career highs in innings pitched in a game. Trevor Hurley matched his 2011 best with two innings of one-hit relief in which he struck out four, walked two, and stranded three total Indians on the bases in the ninth and tenth. Zach Osborne, coming off a streak of problematic outings in which he had allowed at least three runs in four of his last five appearances, dominated over a season-best four innings. The righty from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette whiffed six Indians and walked just two while surrendering two hits. After retiring the side in order in his first two innings, Osborne marooned a pair of Tribesmen in the 16th and two more in the 17th.
Arguably the Pelicans' most valuable player of the day was lefty reliever Chad Bell. Over a career-high five masterful innings beginning with the 18th, the 2009 14th-round draft selection out of Walters State Community College (TN) served as a dominant stopper. The southpaw set the Indians down in order in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st before running into a massive jam.
Though Kinston and Myrtle Beach had each threatened at times throughout extra innings, nothing by each side looked to truly bring their opponent to the brink until Kinston's 22nd. Against Bell, the Indians got a leadoff single by Delvi Cid who proceeded to steal second and third against Birds catcher Zach Zaneski. Behind Cid, Adam Abraham struck out swinging but reached first base when Zaneski missed the tag on the dropped third strike and couldn't handle the ball for a throw to first. With runners at the corners and a drawn-in infield, Abner Abreu hit a chopper to second where Santiago Chirino looked home and threw that way, holding Cid at third but loading the bases.
Three on, nobody out, ninety feet standing between the Indians and victory. Bell wasn't fazed.
The Knoxville, Tennessee native locked in to strike out Tyler Cannon and, in a breathless moment, induced a heart-stopping 6-4-3 double-play grounder off the bat of Doug Pickens to end the inning. Garcia, Chirino, and DiFazio executed the twin-killing perfectly, and Myrtle Beach's exuberant dugout exploded onto the field like a scene out of one of the weekend's NCAA Super Regionals games to greet their triumphant infielders.
WITH an offense that has experienced a rollercoaster ride of momentum gained and lost since the injury of cleanup hitter and third baseman Mike Olt last week, Myrtle Beach was unable to find sustained offensive traction against the Indians' bullpen, even with their own bullpen dealing. Kinston's version of Bell was lefty Francisco Jimenez who kept the Pelicans off-balance for five innings of his own from the 12th through the 17th, striking out eight with two walks and two strikeouts. Jimenez's bullpen mates Jose Flores, Tyler Sturdevant, and Kyle Landis each worked two innings as well, and though the Pelicans got the go-ahead run to scoring position in the tenth, 11th, 13th, 18th, and 23rd, Myrtle Beach never broke through.
Even in the top of the 23rd, with the momentum from their surprise defensive stand fresh in their minds, the Pelicans were powerless against Kinston lefty Chris Jones who worked around a leadoff walk to Ryan Strausborger to get out of the inning facing just one over the minimum. In the bottom half, it was over.
A weary Bell departed to make way for Kasey Kiker, the last available arm in Myrtle Beach's bullpen, and the Indians made their move quickly. Perez singled to greet Kiker and went to scoring position on a Toole sacrifice bunt. Back at the top of the order, first baseman Chase Burnette, who entered the game in place of left fielder Tyler Holt who was ejected in the 16th, nearly a full game's length before Sunday's conclusion, grounded out 6-3, but his slow bouncer took enough time to allow Perez to go to third.
With two outs and a win again just one station away, Frawley didn't let opportunity slip through his hands. The second baseman rapped a hot-shot chopper past Hilligoss into left field. Perez raised his hands over his head in jubilation as he exhaustedly jogged home from third to touch the plate for the final time. The Indians poured onto the field from the third-base dugout to mob both players, and the marathon was completed with a 3-2 Kinston victory.
IN an eerie similarity to last year's 20-inning marathon defeat at the hands of Winston-Salem, Frawley was the owner of a six-strikeout day before his game-winning hit just like the Dash's Chase Blackwood last May 19. Perez, oddly enough, scored all three Kinston runs, and his four hits in nine trips led all players. Frawley had the game's most at-bats on a 2-for-11 day. A jaw-dropping 15 players had eight at-bats or more in the contest with Zach Zaneski's ten Myrtle Beach's most. Zaneski caught all 22.2 Pelicans' defensive innings, and his backup for the day, DiFazio, spent 12.2 innings in the field at first base. Perez caught all 23 as well.
Kinston's Adam Abraham matched Frawley's six-K day, and Holt, Cid, and Cannon all had four strikeouts apiece. In the strikeout parade, Pelicans relievers Hurley (four), Osborne (six), and Bell (eight) all put up season highs. Bell matched a career-best with his total. According to Kinston's numbers, 654 combined pitches were thrown in the game with 339 coming from Pelicans' arms.
Due to the loss of Myrtle Beach's DH in the ninth, three Pelicans pitchers had plate appearances as hitters on the day. Ryan Kelly laid down a successful sacrifice bunt in the 12th while Osborne went 0-for-2 with a strikeout and a groundout and Bell grounded out in his only AB.
The two offenses combined for five runs on 26 hits over 157 at-bats. Myrtle Beach went 1-for-13 with men in scoring position and left 16 men on-base as a team, surprisingly not a season-high. Kinston went 3-for-24 with RISP and left 21 potential runs on the basepaths.
SUNDAY'S affair marked the 36,601st game played in the 66 years of Carolina League history and the fourth time a contest had gone 20 innings or longer. The Pelicans franchise has been involved in three of those games. Prior to Sunday, the longest game in league history was a July 5, 1998 date between the Wilmington Blue Rocks and Danville 97s, a 21-inning ordeal in which the Blue Rocks emerged victorious by a 3-2 final. The 97s existed for just the '98 season while en route in their move from Durham to Myrtle Beach. In 1967, the Kinston Eagles and Tidewater Tides played to a 5-5 tie in 20 innings.
History though it may be, the result is still more bitter than sweet for the Pelicans. Kinston's win kept the Tribe's postseason hopes very much alive in the race for the Southern Division's first-half crown. Myrtle Beach's magic number to clinch the division title remained at five with the loss, and the Birds' division lead dipped back to three games ahead of the Indians. The Pelicans also missed out on an opportunity to eliminate both Winston-Salem and Salem with a victory. Each of those clubs' elimination numbers is at one. Myrtle Beach has seven games remaining in the first half beginning with a three-game set from Monday through Wednesday against the Potomac Nationals at G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge, Virginia.