Lake Monsters Rally For 10-8 Win Sunday
NEW BRITAIN, CT — After giving up an early four-run lead, the Vermont Lake Monsters rallied with five runs over the final two innings for a 10-8 Futures League victory and series victory over the New Britain Bees Sunday afternoon at New Britain Stadium.
With the help of a three-run second inning, Vermont took early leads of 4-0 and 5-1 before the Bees scored seven unanswered runs, including three runs on zero hits and seven walks in the fifth, for an 8-5 lead after seven innings.
The Lake Monsters responded with five straight one-out singles, including RBI hits from Elias Huber (Arizona Western) and Jack Fitzgerald (Montevallo) and a Jake Lopez (Seton Hall) bases loaded walk in the eighth inning to tie the game 8-8.
Travis Stroh (CVU/Fairleigh Dickinson) led off the ninth with a single, advanced to second on a Patrick Shrake (Colby) bunt single and third on a Bryan Richman (Cal Poly Pomona) groundout. James Henshon (Tufts) followed with a shallow fly ball that was dropped by the rightfielder for a forceout at second base, but also allowing Stroh to score with the go ahead run. Fitzgerald plated an insurance run with his league-leading 20th RBI on a single to right for the 10-8 advantage.
MONSTER PERFORMANCES
* Huber 3-for-5, BB, R, 2 RBI
* Henshon 1-for-5, 2 R, 2 RBI
* Fitzgerald 2-for-6, 2 RBI
BEYOND THE BOXSCORE
* All 11 Vermont batters in the game had at least 1 hit, including 5 2-hit and 1 (Huiber) with 3 hits
* 2nd time this season that Lake Monsters had 18 hits in a game (June 2nd in 17-11 win at Nashua
* Vermont is now hitting a league-leading .309 (173-for-559) as a team and averaging 6.94 runs per game
* Starter Justin Sweeney (Saint Joseph’s) tossed 3 scoreless innings (1 H, 0 BB, 4 SO)
* Jack Richburg (CVU/Springfield) scoreless 8th for win and Sam Labrecque (Oberlin) 2 strikeouts in 1-2-3 9th for save
* Stroh has now hit in 6 straight games (8-for-21, .381), while Richman collected 8th multi-hit game and leads FCBL with .421 (24-for-57) average
* Vermont (11-5) moves one game ahead of New Britain (10-6) for 1st-place in the FCBL standings
UPCOMING
Next Game: Monday at Norwich, 6:30pm ( FCBLnetwork.com)
Next Home Game: Friday vs. Nashua, 6:35pm