JUPITER\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels suffered a walk-off loss to the Palm Beach Cardinals Tuesday night at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium.<\/p>\n
Tied 5-5 in the top of the ninth,\u00a0Hideki Prather\u00a0and\u00a0Charlie Scholvin\u00a0opened the inning with a pair of singles. Two batters later,\u00a0Vahn Lackey\u00a0bounced a ball past the draw-in infield, putting Fort Myers (62-51, 25-22) back in front 7-5.\u00a0Adam Falinski\u00a0(2-1) then allowed three runs in the bottom of the ninth with Matthew Miura delivering the game-winning hit on a ground ball down the first base line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fort Myers did not trail in the game until the final pitch of the night, despite the pitching staff matching a season-high with nine walks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mussels opened the scoring in the second.\u00a0Yovanny Duran\u00a0led off with a walk. He advanced to second on a groundout and stole third.\u00a0Aidan Teel\u00a0then drove in Duran with a sacrifice fly to the base of the warning track in right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aided by four stellar defensive plays from\u00a0Merphy Hernandez\u00a0and Scholvin,\u00a0Mussels\u2019 starter\u00a0Eric Hammond\u00a0navigated 2.2 scoreless innings. He gave way to\u00a0Brian Strange\u00a0who needed one pitch to retire the first batter he faced in his career, closing the line on Hammond.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With one out in the fourth,\u00a0Carson Tinney\u00a0blasted his fourth homer of the season to make it 2-0. That began a streak of five consecutive Mussels reaching base. With the bases loaded,\u00a0Isaiah Lane\u00a0doubled down the left field line to bring home two runs.\u00a0Hideki Prather\u00a0added a sacrifice fly to make it 5-0.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strange kept the momentum going by striking out the side in his first full professional inning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cardinals (57-58, 24-25) leveled the score in the fifth, sending 10 men to the plate and scoring five runs (three earned) off of\u00a0Jackson Sleeper\u00a0in his professional debut.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Matthew Becker\u00a0took over with one out and the bases loaded. He walked in a run and a costly error allowed the final two inherited runners to score. Becker ended up working 1.2 innings without allowing a hit or a run of his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tie score held until both teams rallied in their halves of the ninth inning. During the Mussels\u2019 rally, Hernandez added his 42nd steal of the season, moving into a tie for fourth on the all-time single-season list with\u00a0Matt Lawton III\u00a0(1994).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The series continues today, Aug. 19.\u00a0Matt Barr\u00a0(6.43) starts for the Mussels opposite Jacob Haley (4.15). First pitch is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. with coverage beginning at 6:20 p.m. on the Mighty Mussels Baseball Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JUPITER\u00a0\u2013 The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels suffered a walk-off loss to the Palm Beach Cardinals Tuesday night at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-375882","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\/375882","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=375882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}