JP Smith II tied a team record with his 14th home run of the season Wednesday. He homered twice in the Mighty Mussels’ loss to Palm Beach.<\/p>\n
FORT MYERS \u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Palm Beach Cardinals 19-5 Wednesday night at Hammond Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JP Smith II\u00a0connected on two home runs tonight, giving him 14 on the season. Smith, who also homered Tuesday, moves into a tie for the most single-season home runs in the Mussels\u2019 era (since 2020), joining\u00a0Brandon Winokur\u00a0(2024). He passed\u00a0Jayson Bass,\u00a0Quentin Young\u00a0and\u00a0Rubel Cespedes\u00a0(2023)\u00a0who are all tied with 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pair of homers also brought the team total to 103 on the season, tying the all-time franchise record (since 1992).\u00a0<\/p>\n
High-A rehabber\u00a0Michael Carpenter\u00a0got the start for Fort Myers (52-44, 15-16). Carpenter worked around a walk, a single and an error to hold Palm Beach scoreless in the first.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the frame, Minnesota Twins No. 3 prospect\u00a0Emmanuel Rodriguez\u00a0pulled a triple to right-center field for the first hit of his rehab stint with the Mussels. Bass brought him in on a sacrifice fly to put Fort Myers on the board.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals (50-47, 17-14) exploded for eight runs on eight hits in the second inning, both season-highs allowed by Fort Myers. The first nine men reached against Carpenter and\u00a0Matthew Dalquist\u00a0(1-3), with the first run being charged to Carpenter.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals added a run in the fourth to extend their lead.<\/p>\n
Palm Beach starter Brian Holiday struck out eight consecutive batters at one point and totaled nine strikeouts across his four innings.<\/p>\n
Playing in his first game in 41 days,\u00a0Bryan Acuna\u00a0led off the fifth with an infield single.\u00a0Byron Chourio\u00a0followed with a double off the wall in center to bring home Acuna.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In total, the Mussels\u2019 staff allowed a season-high 29 hits, which was also a season high for the Cardinal offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight of the Palm Beach starters recorded three-hit nights, including Johnfrank Salazar who had five hits. It is the first five-hit game allowed by Fort Myers since St. Lucie\u2019s Jaylen Palmer in July 2021.<\/p>\n
After striking out 19 times on the night, Fort Myers has whiffed 46 times in the last three games.<\/p>\n
The series continues today, July 30. First pitch is set for 7:05 p.m. with coverage beginning at 6:40 p.m. on the Mighty Mussels Baseball Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JP Smith II tied a team record with his 14th home run of the season Wednesday. He homered…\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-357681","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\/357681","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=357681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357681\/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=357681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}