FROM THE ALTOONA CURVE:
Contreras Fires Six Scoreless in 4-1 Win
Arden Pabst slammed his second home run of the season on Tuesday night
RICHMOND, VA. – Roansy Contreras struck out eight batters across six scoreless innings to lead the Altoona Curve (15-9) to a 4-1 win over the Richmond Flying Squirrels (15-10) on Tuesday night at The Diamond.
The Curve grabbed a first inning lead against Gerson Garabito when Mason Martin drove in Ji-Hwan Bae with a sacrifice fly. Garabito settled in to hold the Curve to just one baserunner over his next four innings, suffering a tough-luck loss.
Richmond used two hits and a hit by pitch to load the bases with two outs in the first inning against Contreras, but the 21-year-old right-hander danced out of trouble and worked around a man in scoring position again in the second inning. Contreras then set down 12-of-13 batters over his final four innings to earn his third win of the season. He finished his outing with a flourish, striking out the side in order in the sixth.
Rodolfo Castro added an RBI double in the sixth inning to push the Curve lead to a 2-0 in support of Contreras. The Curve added two key insurance runs in the seventh inning when Arden Pabst blasted a two-run shot over the wall in left-center to score Jonah Davis (1-for-2, 2B, 2 BB).
Richmond mounted a two-out rally in the seventh inning against Cam Alldred. After quickly setting down the first two batters of the inning, Bryan Torres doubled and pinch-hitter Sandro Fabian doubled him in with a shot down the left field line. Kyle Mottice and Heliot Ramos then drew walks to load the bases, but Alldred came back to get Shane Matheny to fly out to right to end the inning.
John O’Reilly worked around some traffic in the eighth inning and set down the side in order in the ninth inning to finish off his second save of the season.
Cal Mitchell saw his nine-game hit streak come to an end with an 0-for-4 night at the plate. Oneil Cruz went 1-for-4 with a stolen base and extended his hit streak to six games.
Curve pitching struck out 12 batters on Tuesday night, the 16th time in 24 games this season that Altoona has struck out ten or more batters in a game.
The Curve continue their six-game series at The Diamond in Richmond, VA on Wednesday night at 12:00 p.m. RHP Travis MacGregor (0-1, 2.63) will make his fifth start of the season, Richmond will start RHP Trenton Toplikar (0-0, 2.08).
