FORT MYERS \u2013\u00a0The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Bradenton Marauders by a final score of 4-3 Tuesday night at Lee Health Sports Complex.<\/p>\n
The Mussels fall to 0-8 in series openers at home. They are 23-7 in non-series openers at Hammond Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mussels\u2019 tied a modern franchise record (since 2020) with an extra-base hit in their 32nd consecutive game. They matched the mark set at the end of the 2024 season and have now totaled 98 XBH during the current streak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fort Myers sent\u00a0Ramiro Villanueva\u00a0to the mound to make his team-leading 12th start of the season. Villanueva allowed a run in the first and did not record an out in the second inning. The righty exited trailing 2-0.<\/p>\n
Nick McAuliffe\u00a0and Triple-A rehabber\u00a0Julian Merryweather\u00a0recorded a combined six outs without allowing an additional run across the second and third innings.\u00a0Merit Jones\u00a0took over in the fourth and worked in and out of trouble to put a zero on the board.<\/p>\n
Mussel pitching needed 109 pitches to navigate the first four innings, while stranding nine base runners in that time. All nine Bradenton hitters had reached base safely by third inning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the fourth, Fort Myers got on the board on a sacrifice fly from\u00a0Ricardo Paez,\u00a0scoring\u00a0JP Smith II\u00a0and making it 2-1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jones allowed a run in the fifth on a double from Edgleen Perez, making it 3-1. He struck out the final two batters he faced and totaled four strikeouts across three innings of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eric Hammond\u00a0took over in the seventh inning. He allowed a leadoff, opposite-field home run to Richard Ramirez, who recorded the first four-hit game of his season on Tuesday night. Hammond worked the final three innings, with the home run being the only blemish.<\/p>\n
Miguel Briceno\u00a0doubled with two outs in the seventh to begin a rally. Back-to-back RBI singles from\u00a0Ramiro Dominguez\u00a0and\u00a0Jayson Bass\u00a0cut Bradenton\u2019s lead to 4-3.<\/p>\n
The Mussels had first and second with no outs in the ninth, but couldn\u2019t bring across the tying run, dropping their third game in a row.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The staff totaled 200 pitches on the night and stranded 14 base runners. Bradenton had traffic in every inning. Fort Myers is now 1-5 in July.<\/p>\n
The series continues today, July 8. Fort Myers sends\u00a0Jason Reitz\u00a0(2.86) to the mound, Bradenton counters with Irwin Ramirez (4.50). 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":"FORT MYERS \u2013\u00a0The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Bradenton Marauders by a final score of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-333179","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\/333179","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=333179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}