FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Palm Beach Cardinals 9-3 Thursday night at Hammond Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mighty Mussels saw six members of the 2026 Minnesota Twins\u2019 draft class added to the roster Thursday.\u00a0Vahn Lackey\u00a0(No. 3 overall pick)\u00a0Carson Tinney\u00a0(2nd round)\u00a0Aidan Teel\u00a0(11th round)\u00a0Colby Turner\u00a0(12th round)\u00a0Isaiah Lane\u00a0(13th round) all made their professional debuts.\u00a0Charlie Scholvin\u00a0(15th round) was added to the roster and is expected to debut later this series.<\/p>\n
Mussels\u2019 (52-45, 15-17) starter\u00a0Eric Hammond\u00a0(0-4) struck out a career-high seven batters across his 3.2 innings of work. The righty exited trailing 2-0, after yielding four hits on a season high 63 pitches. He retired the final four men he faced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the fourth inning, Tinney drew a one-out walk. Teel followed with an infield single, marking the first professional hit for the draft class. Turner then singled to center to plate a run and make it 2-1.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals (51-47, 17-15) got the run back in the fifth off of\u00a0Adam Falinski, extending their lead back to two.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lane led off the bottom of the fifth with a double, collecting the first extra-base hit for the draft class.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nick McAuliffe\u00a0took over in the sixth and allowed two runs after issuing three walks to begin his outing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fort Myers got a run back in the bottom of the frame on a throwing error, plating Lackey, who had reached on a walk, and moving the score to 5-2.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael Hilker Jr.\u00a0took over in the eighth and allowed three runs on four hits to increase the deficit to 8-2.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Merphy Hernandez\u00a0led off the bottom of the eighth with an infield single. After recording two outs, Justin Millitello plunked three consecutive batters to make it 8-3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hilker allowed a solo homer to Ryan Weingartner in the ninth to move the score to 9-3. He exited after matching a season-high in pitches with 48 across 1.2 innings. The four runs allowed was also a season-high for Hilker. It was just the second time he has allowed multiple earned runs in his team leading 29 appearances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The series continues today, July 31. Twins No. 27 prospect\u00a0Matt Barr\u00a0will make his Hammond Stadium debut. 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":"FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels were defeated by the Palm Beach Cardinals 9-3 Thursday night at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-358828","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\/358828","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=358828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}