READING, Pa. – The Hartford Yard Goats (3-1) edged out a 3-1 victory over the Reading Fightin Phils (0-4) in front of 6.480 fans at FirstEnergy Stadium on Tuesday night. Reading kicked off its 60th season of Phillies affiliation by out-hitting Hartford 8-7, but the Yard Goats defense leveraged three double plays and a pair of caught stealing marks to grab their first win.<\/p>\n
After a pair of scoreless frames from both starters, Hartford drew first blood with two runs in the third inning. Braylen Wimmer smacked a line drive turned sacrifice fly to score Benny Montgomery for the first run. A Kehden Hettiger throwing error to third base then plated Deeyan Jorge to give the Rockies\u2019 Double-A affiliate an early 2-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
The Fightin Phils didn\u2019t have a home run in the opening series vs. Akron, but Alex Binelas (1) snapped that dry spell in the fifth inning with a solo shot to right field to make the tally 2-1. Reading was fifth in Double-A with 118 home runs last year, and Binelas\u2019 long ball marked home run no. 1 on the Fightins\u2019 Opening Day.<\/p>\n
With the Yard Goats operating with a slim lead, Bryant Betancourt took over the game in multiple phases. After cutting down a pair of attempted base stealers in the seventh (Dylan Campbell) and eighth (Dante Nori) innings, Hartford\u2019s backstop bolstered the team\u2019s lead to 3-1 with a solo shot in the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
Former Fightin Phil Eiberson Castellano (1-0) got the win, tossing six innings of one-run ball while giving up six hits and striking out four. His lone blemish was the Binelas solo shot.<\/p>\n
Braydon Tucker (0-1) took the loss after twirling four frames of two-run ball (one earned) on three hits with four strikeouts. Tucker is the fourth Reading starter in a row to log at least four innings.<\/p>\n
Victor Juarez (2) shut down the side in order to give Hartford its third win in a row. The Yard Goats have now allowed just five runs in the last three games, while the Fightin Phils have scored just five runs in four contests thus far.<\/p>\n
Nori paced Reading\u2019s offense with a 2-for-4 performance, while Binelas hit a home run and drew a walk.<\/p>\n
The Fightin Phils return to the field on Wednesday at 6:45 p.m. against the Hartford Yard Goats to continue the first homestand of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – The Hartford Yard Goats (3-1) edged out a 3-1 victory over the Reading Fightin Phils…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72366,69709,128,130,129,44158],"class_list":["post-160151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-hartford-yard-goats","tag-home-opener","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-fightin-phils"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}