Down East Claims Victory in Wet Zebulon

ZEBULON, NC - A tremendous pitching effort kept the Mudcats (10-12, 46-44) bats at bay as the Wood Ducks (11-10, 35-55) claimed game three of the series 4-2. Richelson Peña collected his sixth quality start in his last eight tries and the bullpen was scoreless for the final three frames with Jacob Shortslef and Adam Choplick.

Luis La O opened the scoring in the second inning, blasting his eighth home run of the year to jump out to a 2-0 lead. Down East would only claim four hits in the contest, but took advantage of four walks and three hit batsmen to capitalize in the fifth.
The highlight of the defense came in the fourth inning when Jake Gatewood doubled down the left field line with Corey Ray on first. Josh Altmann dug the ball out in the corner and began a perfect relay to Josh Morgan who fired home for Chuck Moorman to tag Ray out trying to score.
Two more runs were plated in rather anticlimactic ways in the fifth. First with Morgan hustling out of a potential double play ball to mark his team-leading 32nd run batted in. Later, a passed ball charged to Cooper Hummel plated Ti'Quan Forbes to pace the offense at 4-0.
Carolina responded in the bottom half of the inning with a ground ball to first with runners on the corners from Jose Cuas. He would reach on a fielding error, but the inning would end when Trent Clark bounced into a 4-6-3 double play.
The sixth plated another run for the Mudcats on a Gatewood RBI single, Pena still finished the start with six innings and five strikeouts. He will remain third in the league in ERA with a 2.91 mark.
Wuilder Rodriguez retired the last seven Woodies he faced to protect from insurance runs, but Shortslef was equally effective on the other side in the seventh and eighth innings. The right-hander struck out three Mudcats claiming his second hold of the year.
Choplick worked the ninth for back-to-back nights for the first time this season. It was no trouble for the lefty, inducing two groundouts and a strikeout to seal the win for the Woodies.
Down East looks for the series win on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Down East right-hander Jonathan Hernández (1-2, 5.76) will face righty Conor Harber (1-6, 6.10) for Carolina. You can listen to every pitch of the 2017 season live on Sports/Talk 960 The Bull or streamed on the TuneIn Radio app.