Courtesy of the Niagara Gazette
By Doug Smith
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The hardest-running team in the league won on a walk Thursday night.
Northwestern’s Nick Linne coaxed a two-out, five-pitch base on balls in the 10th, forcing home Ryan Kiesel with the Niagara Power’s winning run, 2-1, vs. the Geneva Twins before 263 soggy but satisfied fans at Sal Maglie Stadium.
The Power’s eighth consecutive victory clinched third place in the New York State Collegiate League’s Western Division, and pulled the Bolts within percentage points of Olean, which lost 7-3 to the Rochester Athletes.
Jamie Suggs and Seth Eller combined for 14 strikeouts and stranded 12 Twins. Power pitchers have shut out opponents in 49 of their last 55 innings.
Kiesel started the winning rally with a one-out walk, then broke for second. The Power have swiped 116 bases this year, almost double the total of any other team in the league, but this was a decoy, a classic hit-and-run, Jaman Hammel singling through the hole where once the shortstop stood, Kiesel easily reaching third.
After intentionally walking Chane Lynch, Twin pitcher Alex Juday bulled his neck to strike out Adam Taylor on an outshoot, but Linne stared him down and strolled on 3-and-1. Certain he had hit the zone, Juday writhed in anquish as Kiesel came marching home.
After Kiesel’s leadoff hit in the first, leading to a run on Taylor’s sacrifice fly, Power batters went hitless into the seventh. Geneva tied it in the fourth on Isaac Behme’s RBI grounder.
Suggs and Eller pitched five innings each, Eller picking up his second “W” in four days. Kiesel gave him a hand in the visitors’ 10th, a long, twisting run through the raindrops to capture Nick Kranick’s two-out bid for RBI double.
POWER POINTS: Wednesday night leftovers: The top of the Rochester lineup went 0-for-15 while the Power’s first four went 6-14, an average of .429… And third-baseman Tyler Schweigert ran at least 70 feet to corral a foul popup over his shoulder, a play possible only at Sal Maglie in the Western Division, as no other field has that much foul territory… Olean comes in tonight for Fan Appreciation Night, a battle for second place to be continued next Wednesday down there… The Oilers scored 11 in the sixth vs. Wellsville Wednesday, then barely hung on, 17-10.
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