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| St. Lucie Mets Via X/Twitter |
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (July 11, 2024) – The St. Lucie Mets used strong pitching and an opportunistic offense to defeat the Lakeland Flying Tigers 8-3 on Thursday night at Clover Park.
Mets starter Edgar Moreta pitched 4.1 scoreless innings and gave up just three singles. Layonel Ovalles survived a shaky sixth inning to keep the Mets in the lead. Gregori Louis pitched scoreless seventh and eighth innings. Eduardo Herrera closed out the game with two strikeouts in a perfect ninth inning.
The Mets offense did not record an extra base hit but took advantage of several walks and errors committed by the Flying Tigers. Jose Hernandez scored from second base in the second inning when catcher Eduardo Valencia threw wildly to second base on a pickoff try and center fielder Brett Callahan misfielded the ball.
The Mets scored three runs in the third inning. Ronald Hernandez hit a one-out single and Lakeland starter Gabriel Reyes walked the next two batters to load the bases. An error by third baseman Samuel Gil on a ground ball hit by Colin Houck scored a run to make it 2-0. Reyes then balked home Boston Baro for a 3-0 Mets lead. Kevin Villavicencio capped the inning with a RBI single to make it 4-0.
The Flying Tigers collected five hits against Ovalles in the sixth inning. A two-run single by Gil and a RBI single from Daneurys De La Cruz made it 4-3. However, Mets left fielder Yohairo Cuevas was able to throw out Gil trying to go to third base for a key first out. Ovalles got a lineout then a fly out to strand the tying run at third base and the go-ahead run at second base.
Baro gave the Mets some breathing room with a sac fly in the bottom of the sixth to extend the Mets lead to 5-3.
The Mets scored three runs with two outs in the eighth inning to pull away. They did not hit the ball out of the infield. Hernandez drew a walk from Eiker Huizi. Baro hustled for an infield single on a ground ball to keep the inning going. Huizi then walked Cuevas and Houck to force home a run that made it 6-3. Thomas Bruss relieved Huizi and threw two run scoring wild pitches to increase the Mets lead to 8-3.
Louis (4-0) was credited with the win. Reyes (0-1) suffered the loss.
Baro went 2 for 3 with two singles, a walk, a RBI and two runs. Cuevas walked twice to extend his on-base streak to 17 games. He's drawn 10 walks over his last seven games.
The Mets held the Flying Tigers duo of Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark to 1 for 10. The pair of first round draft picks by Detroit went 5 for 7 with three doubles, three walks and six runs on Wednesday.
The Mets (7-11, 29-55) and Flying Tigers (10-8, 52-31) play the fourth game of their series at Clover Park on Friday. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. Kids can run the bases after the game.
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