VISALIA, CA - Trailing 7-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, Fernery Ozuna, who has been an offensive spark plug since his promotion from Class-A Kane County, started the frame with a single against Storm closer Colby Blueberg.
VISALIA, CA - Trailing 7-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, Fernery Ozuna, who has been an offensive spark plug since his promotion from Class-A Kane County, started the frame with a single against Storm closer Colby Blueberg.
Ozuna, who had homered to get the Rawhide on the board in the seventh inning, then saw both Tyler Baker and Henry Castillo strike out to push Visalia to their final out. Daniel Lockhart drew a five-pitch walk to bring up Jason Morozowski. Morozowski took a one-strike offering and flipped it into right field, scoring Ozuna and bringing Sergio Alcántara to the plate as the tying run. Alcantara fell behind with two strikes but battled back to draw a walk and load the bases for Marty Herum as the potential winning run.
Herum had collected the first Rawhide hit of the game with a seeing-eye ground ball single int he fourth inning, and was due. But he struck out swinging on a breaking ball from Blueberg to end the game.
Lake Elsinore (42-44/7-9) took an early lead off of Cody Reed (L, 1-4) by homering twice in the first inning: one from Javier Guerra and another from Austin Allen. Carlos Belen followed with a single and Wilfri De La Cruz doubled off of the left-center field wall to bring home Belen and make it 3-0.
Visalia (41-45/5-11) saw the Storm plate a run off of Reed in the second and third innings on an RBI groundout by Guerra and a run-scoring single by Taylor Kohlwey. J.R. Bradley took over and shut out Lake Elsinore in the fourth and fifth innings before seeing Allen drive home two more in the sixth to make it 7-0 Storm.
Thomas Dorminy (W, 2-1) tossed five shutout innings, striking out eight and walking two in his first start of 2017. Ozuna homered off of Zech Lemond with Austin Tyler aboard to get the Rawhide aboard in the seventh.
The homer broke a 24-inning scoreless streak for the Rawhide offense, spanning two full games against Modesto and the first six innings of tonight's contest.
The Rawhide will continue the series against the Lake Elsinore Storm (A-Advanced, San Diego Padres). It will match up Visalia RHP Tyler Badamo (0-1, 12.00) and Padres #17 prospect LHP Logan Allen (0-1, 1.00). First pitch is at 7:00 and tickets are still available on rawhidebaseball.com.
