[jksander]

June 10, 2025: We’re alone in the lead by a game over the Frederick Keys and the Trenton Thunder, heading into our first home series against the 2-4 Mahoning Valley Scrappers, who just handed Frederick its first loss of the year with a 6-4 road win. Godbout got us the lead in the bottom of the first with a solo homer out of left, and he did it again in the third with a two-run blast pretty much to the same location ... 3-0 lead! The Scrappers loaded the bases on two outs in the top of the fourth, but our pitcher got out of the jam and into the bottom of the frame without giving up the shutout lead. We added on with another two-run blast in the fifth, this one by Alex Lodise with Godbout scoring from first, and we loaded the bags in the bottom of the sixth, though nobody would score off it. They got testy in the bottom of the eighth, hitting Godbout with a pitch to put him on first as our leadoff htiter, getting him out on a subsequent double play as they kept us from adding to the carnage. But J.J. Garcia shut them down convincingly in the ninth and we added another 5-0 shutout to our tally! Grant Richardson picked up his second win, improving to 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA now through 3.2 innings in relief ... tonight he struck out two without a hit in two innings of work. We outhit Mahoning Valley 12-8, led by a 4-4 hitting performance from Henry Godbout, as he racked up three runs and three RBIs. He had an OPS of .998 while in college, but the University of Virginia junior is currently slugging .933 with an OPS of 1.371 through his first seven games of this season ... which should start raising his draft profile significantly!

June 11, 2025: J.T. Quinn made his first actual start for us after his two-inning win in extra innings last week. Phillip Ard gave Mahoning Valley a 1-0 lead in the top of the second with his first homer of the season, but Lodise hit an RBI double in the bottom of the fourth for us to tie the score at 1-1! Quinn got through five innings before being replaced by Liam Doyle at the start of the sixth, at which point the bullpen picked up where he left off ... in the bottom of the ninth, still tied 1-1, Godbout and Lodise picked up back-to-back singles, and with no outs, Brody Donay walked it off with a three-run homer to give us a stunning 4-1 win! Derrick Smith, our third pitcher of the night, got the win with two hits and two strikeouts in the top of the ninth, but Quinn (five innings, one hit, one walk, seven K’s) and Doyle (three innings, no hits, one walk, three strikeouts) laid the groundwork for him. We outhit them 7-3 in the duel, led by Donay with two hits, a run and three RBIs, while Lodise added two hits, a run and an RBI.

We’re eight games into the season, and right now our bullpen is absolutely insane ... all our pitching, in fact, as our starters have a 1.81 ERA (tied for first) and our bullpen has an incredible 0.31 ERA. We lead the six-team lead in every pitching or defensive stat, and though we’re only hitting .233 (3rd) we lead the league in on base percentage (.303), extra base hits (23) and are second in home runs with 18. Not a bad start by any stretch!

June 12, 2025: This game was another knock-down drag-out fight, knotted up with no score after six innings, with Ben Barrett having a career night already. He got us into the stretch with Mahoning Valley still scoreless, and we came to life in the bottom of the inning, putting runners on the corners with two outs and our leadoff man Cohen coming to the plate. But he popped out harmlessly to second and the inning ended with the game still scoreless, just seven hits between our two teams as Ben Abeldt started warming up. Abeldt came out to take the ball from Barrett with two outs in the eighth, our young starter having thrown 98 pitches, striking out 13 batters with just four hits against him, but he was denied a chance at the win. Finally we broke through in the bottom of the inning with an RBI single by Clay Grady, giving us a one-run advantage, and Vince Fattore doubled over the wall left of center, the ground-rule hit driving in two more! Abeldt struck out two in the ninth to seal the deal as we notched another shutout win, 3-0. That gave Abeldt, who pitched 1.1 innings with a walk and two K’s, his first win of the year. Barrett, meanwhile, didn’t get the victory, but he’s now pitched 13 innings in his first two starts with just nine hits against him while striking out 23 with NO walks! We outhit the Scrappers 6-4, led by Grady who had two hits, a run and an RBI.