Yasser Mercedes has another big night at the plate for the Mussels.<\/p>\n
PHOTO PROVIDED<\/p>\n
FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Tampa Tarpons by a final score of 4-3 Wednesday night at the Lee Health Sports Complex.<\/p>\n
The Mussels\u2019 Yasser Mercedes\u00a0added to his early-season highlight reel on the night. He connected on his fifth home run of the season in the bottom of the first inning to right-center field. The ball left the bat at 103 mph, which gave him three-straight 100+ mph hits dating back to his record-setting night on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Later on in the game, Mercedes walked to lead off the fifth inning, then stole second and third base. With\u00a0Quentin Young\u00a0batting, Mercedes dashed to the plate for a straight steal of home, catching Tampa southpaw Pedro Rodriguez off-guard. Mercedes, who set a Mussel-era record with 34 stolen bases in 2025, extended his 2026 lead with 11 steals.<\/p>\n
Mercedes is the first Mussel to steal of home since\u00a0Angel Del Rosario\u00a0on Aug. 27, 2024, against Clearwater, however Del Rosario\u2019s steal came on the back-end of a double steal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mercedes continues to pace qualified Mighty Mussel hitters in average (.324), HR (5), RBI (19), runs scored (18), OPS (1.035) and steals (11).<\/p>\n
Fort Myers (16-13) sent\u00a0Matthew Dalquist\u00a0to the mound to make his fourth start of the season. Dalquist gave up a one-out triple to Tampa\u2019s (14-15) Jackson Lovich in the first, but struck out the following two hitters to strand the runner at third.<\/p>\n
Dalquist worked around another hit in the second, inducing a 6-4-3 double play to face the minimum.<\/p>\n
After a clean third inning, the first two men reached in the fourth. Dalquist used another 6-4-3 twin killing to retire the side and strand two more runners.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the fourth,\u00a0Ryan Sprock\u00a0led off the inning with a single, then\u00a0Ian Daugherty\u00a0followed up with a knock of his own. Later in the frame,\u00a0Dameury Pena\u00a0roped a two-out single into left field to score Sprock. This made the score 2-0 Fort Myers.<\/p>\n
Tampa fought back to cut the Mussel lead in half in the subsequent frame, manufacturing a run after a leadoff walk against Dalquist.<\/p>\n
Dalquist was done after five innings, matching the longest start of the season for a Mussels\u2019 pitcher. He allowed four hits and one earned run while striking out four without issuing a walk.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the fifth, Mercedes\u2019 mad dash around the bases made the score 3-1.<\/p>\n
The Tarpons continued to press in the sixth after new Mussels\u2019 righty\u00a0Matthew DesMartes\u00a0issued a leadoff walk to Enmanuel Tejada. He stole both second and third, then came in on an RBI single by Jackson Lovich to make the score 3-2 Mussels.<\/p>\n
In the top of the seventh inning, with two-out and no one on base, the Tarpons rallied to tie the game. JoJo Jackson worked a walk, stole second, then scored on an RBI double by Gregory Bozzo. This made the score 3-3.<\/p>\n
Tampa paid off its rally by taking the lead in the top of the eighth. Three consecutive walks issued by\u00a0Jake Murray\u00a0(0-1) allowed a run to score on a sacrifice fly by Hans Montero. The Tarpons led 4-3 after seven and a half innings.<\/p>\n
Parker Seay (3-0), who entered the game in the seventh inning to get a key strikeout, shut down the Mussels in the final two frames. Seay struck out five Fort Myers\u2019 hitters and faced one over the minimum in 2.1 innings to secure the win.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, leaving 11 on base in their fifth consecutive loss.<\/p>\n
The series continues today, May 7.\u00a0Merit Jones\u00a0(2.38) gets the start for Fort Myers, Justin West (6.53) goes for Tampa. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. with coverage beginning at 6:40 p.m. on the Mighty Mussels Baseball Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yasser Mercedes has another big night at the plate for the Mussels. PHOTO PROVIDED FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-262123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}