Brett Francisco earned his 8th win of the season Tuesday.<\/p>\n
FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels defeated the Clearwater Threshers by a final score of 2-1 Tuesday night at Lee Health Sports Complex.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers (59-48, 22-20) sent\u00a0Matthew Dalquist\u00a0to the mound for his ninth start of the season and he retired the side in the first inning.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the first inning,\u00a0Yovanny Duran\u00a0led off the inning with a walk, then stole second base and advanced to third on a throwing error by Clearwater\u2019s (63-44, 23-18) catcher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Minnesota Twins 2026 1st rounder\u00a0Vahn Lackey\u00a0drove Duran in on a sacrifice fly to put Fort Myers up 1-0. After a single from\u00a0Ramiro Dominguez, Luis Fragoza\u00a0doubled to left to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
Dalquist allowed a run in the second on back-to-back doubles. He worked out of further trouble by leaving the bases loaded, holding the 2-1 lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the first two batters reached against Dalquist in the third, he induced a double play ball and fly out to retire the side. He needed 61 pitches to navigate three frames, marking his most pitches in an outing since May 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brent Francisco\u00a0(8-2) worked the fourth through sixth inning and retired nine of the 10 batters he faced. The righty matched a season-high in innings while throwing 21 of his 28 pitches for strikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brad Rudis\u00a0made his Hammond Stadium debut as the second man out of the bullpen. Rudis struck out four men in two perfect frames.<\/p>\n
In the eighth,\u00a0Colby Turner\u00a0poked a single through the left side of the infield with two outs, then swiped second base. This snapped a streak of 10 consecutive hitters retired by Clearwater pitching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turner\u2019s steal is No. 232 for the Mighty Mussels this season, drawing closer to the all-time record of 236 set by last year\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
Adam Falinski\u00a0(S4) took over in the ninth inning. An infield single from Caden Bogenpohl to lead off the inning broke a string of 13 consecutive hitters retired by Fort Myers\u2019 pitching.<\/p>\n
Falinski ended up stranding the tying run at second, wrapping up his fourth save in as many opportunities.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers has now won three consecutive games and are five games behind the Tampa Tarpons for first place in the FSL West Second Half standings.<\/p>\n
The series continues today, Aug. 12.\u00a0Eric Hammond\u00a0(4.86) starts for the Mussels, opposite Cole Gilley (3.55). 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":"Brett Francisco earned his 8th win of the season Tuesday. FORT MYERS\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels defeated…\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-369472","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\/369472","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=369472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369472\/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=369472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}