Offense Erupts in First Half Series Finale

Winston-Salem, N.C. - The offense scored early and often as the Wilmington Blue Rocks closed out the first half of the 2018 campaign with a lopsided, wire-to-wire 10-1 victory over the Winston-Salem Dash Sunday afternoon at BB&T Ballpark. Seven different Blue Rocks picked up a hit while six different hitters drove in a run. Gabriel Cancel paced the offense with three hits in the winning effort.
 

The Blue Rocks wasted no time getting on the board during the Father's Day contest. Wilmington manufactured a run when Nick Heath led the game off with a single, advanced to second on a wild pitch and moved over to third on a fly ball from D.J Burt. Khalil Lee drove home Burt with an RBI groundout to give the Blue Rocks a 1-0 lead.
The offense picked up the pace in the second inning and sent nine men to the plate and scored five runs. With one out, six straight Blue Rocks reached starting with Vance Vizcaino's single to center field to ignite the eruption. Oliver Nunez followed with a double to score Vizcaino to make it a 2-0 ballgame. Heath followed with a walk before Burt ripped a single to right field to extend the Wilmington lead, 3-0. Lee walked and Cancel clubbed a two-run double to left field to break the game open, 5-0. Kort Peterson capped the scoring with an RBI groundout to make it an early 6-0 advantage for the Blue Crew.
Wilmington tacked on more runs with a run in the top of the fourth from Peterson who grounded into a fielder's choice before Burt doubled home Chris DeVito in the fifth inning to give the Rocks a comfortable 8-0 lead. In the eighth inning, the Blue Rocks added two more runs with Vizcaino's RBI single and Nunez was hit by a pitch to give the Rocks their 10 runs.

Winston-Salem's lone run came in the bottom of the seventh inning on a Yeyson Yrizarri RBI double as the combination of Daniel Tillo and Jace Vines piggybacked off each other and held the Dash to just the lone run, scattered eight hits and racked up 10 strikeouts.
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The Wilmington Blue Rocks will be back in action on Thursday, June 21 when they begin the second half of the 2018 campaign with a four-game series against the Potomac Nationals at Northwest Federal Field with first pitch scheduled for 7:05 p.m.
PEBBLES OF KNOWLEDGE:
The combination of Daniel Tillo and Jace Vines kept Winston-Salem's offense at bay and put together the first 10 strikeout game for the Blue Rocks this season. Tillo tossed five scoreless innings and racked up five strikeouts while Vines earned his first save of the season and fifth of his career as he piggybacked off Tillo. Vines tossed the final four innings and also struck out five batters. The scoreless outing for Tillo marked the fourth time in six starts that the southpaw has allowed an earned run or less since joining the Blue Rocks.
The 10 runs scored by the Blue Rocks is just the fourth time this season Wilmington has scored double-digit runs in a game this season. The last time was On June 9 at home against Frederick when the Blue Rocks defeated the Keys, 10-6. Four different Blue Rocks had multi-hit games with Gabriel Cancel leading the charge with three hits including a double.
The Blue Rocks finished the first half with a 31-39 record. Wilmington earned a series split with the Dash and ended the final road trip of the half with a 3-4 record thanks to taking the final two games of the series at Winston-Salem.  
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