BURLINGTON, VT — Emmet Christian tossed five scoreless innings, while Cooper Berry and Nolan Colby combined to go 6-for-8 with three runs, three doubles and five RBI to lead the Vermont Lake Monsters to a 10-4 Futures League victory over the New Britain Bees in front of 4,034 at historic Centennial Field on Saturday night.
Christian (Tufts), making his first start of the season after 13 relief appearances, retired the first seven batters he faced before giving up a one-out double in the third that was quickly erased on a line drive double play to second base. Only other hits allowed were a two-out single in the fourth and one-out single in the fifth.
Berry (Pomona Pitzer) gave Vermont a 1-0 lead in the third inning with an RBI double before he followed a Colby (Fairfield) two-run double in the fourth with a two-run single for a 5-0 Lake Monsters lead. New Britain put together five straight one-out singles in the sixth to cut the deficit to 5-4 before Vermont scored the final five runs of the contest.
Colby doubled and Berry walked to load the bases in the bottom of the sixth before Shaun McMillan (St. Johns) RBI groundout for a two-run lead, then Will Mahala (VIrginia) one-out triple and Jeremy Sosa (Manhattan) RBI single in seventh for a 7-4 advantage. Hunter Kingsbury (Bryant) and Leandro Guevara (AIC) sandwiched sacrifice flies to right around a run-scoring wild pitch in a three-run eighth.
MONSTER PERFORMANCES
* Christian 5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 so (65 pitches, 46 strikes)
* Colby 3-for-4, 2 R, 2 2B, 2 RBI
* Berry 3-for-4, BB, R, 2B, 3 RBI
BEYOND THE BOXSCORE
* Lake Monsters (37-19) have won four of its last 5 games overall and 13 of its last 16
* The game was the 300th FCBL regular-season game for Vermont (189-111, .630)
* With the 5 scoreless frames, Christian has now thrown 12 straight scoreless innings (4 H, 5 BB, 12 SO) to lower ERA from 12.00 to 5.14 overall
* Shamus Kelly (Wesleyan), Zander Teator (Babson), Sean Gamble (Bethany Lutheran) each tossed 1 hitless inning of relief (Teator and Gamble 2 strikeouts apiece)
* McMillan RBI groundout increased his league-leading total to 52 RBI
* 10th time this season that the Lake Monsters have reached double-figures in scoring
* 5th crowd of 4,000+ at Centennial Field this season (83,307 total for 2,687 average)
Next Game: Sunday vs. New Britain,5:05pm
Promotion: CHAMP’s Birthday
Broadcast: fcblnetwork.com (stream)