Slammers Take Time in Losing Long One to Bums

The Joliet Slammers’ pitching staff threw 179 pitches — only 99 for strikes — as the Traverse City Beach Bums defeated the home team by a final score of 9-3 Sunday night.

The Slammers actually took the early lead as Josh Flores started the bottom of the first with a solo home run. Brad Netzel followed with a single and stole second. After Hector Pellot drew a walk, Erik Lis smacked a ball off the glove of Hector Bernal at second and Netzel came around to score on the RBI single.

Traverse City cut the lead in half in the third against winless Ryne Miller.

John Parham singled to start things off and after a sacrifice bunt Matt Brown singled him to third. A Jose Vargas RBI double made the score 2-1. Miller hit J.T. Hall but got a strike out and a fly out to get out of the inning with only the one run scoring.

He would not be so lucky in the fourth. Back-to-back walks and a single loaded the bases with nobody out. Miller looked like he might be able to get out of another jam as he got a pop out and a strike out. But he walked Vargas on a close 3-2 pitch and the game was tied.

Hall followed with a grounder to second that went right through Pellot’s legs and two more runs scored to give the Beach Bums the 4-2 lead.

Another walk chased Miller and Jeremy Tietze entered only to walk in a run of his own. When the dust cleared, four runs had crossed the plate on a grand total of one hit.

Parham doubled and Zack Pace singled him home in the fifth to make it 6-2. The Slammers got one back in the bottom half of the frame as Reid Chenworth doubled in Erik Lis to cut the deficit to three.

That would be as close as the Slammers got as the Beach Bums tacked on two more in the seventh and one more in the eighth to pull away.

The game lasted three hours and 33 minutes, the longest in the Slammers’ short history at Silver Cross Field. Despite the loss, the Slammers remain 1.5 games up on the Windy City ThunderBolts in the East Division.