By Holden Mostofsky<\/p>\n
Correspondent<\/p>\n
MOOSIC \u2014 Adam Kloffenstein and the bullpen helped the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre RailRiders win a pitchers\u2019 duel Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Kloffenstein allowed one run and two hits in five innings with three walks and five strikeouts. Zach Messinger and Carson Coleman then came on in relief to help close out the RailRiders\u2019 3-2 victory over the Norfolk Tides in the opening game of a series at PNC Field before a crowd of 3,790.<\/p>\n
\u201cPitching staff is the story of the day,\u201d RailRiders manager Shelley Duncan said. \u201cKloff did a good job grinding. He had that one inning where he had a couple walks, but got out of it without a run. Messenger did an amazing job coming in and going two innings and Carson was outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the RailRiders who went on top in the bottom of the second inning.<\/p>\n
Payton Henry started the rally with a one-out single, and Duke Ellis reached on a catcher\u2019s interference. Then with two outs, Jonathan Ornelas hit a ground-rule double to score Henry. The team caught a tough break on the play since Ellis easily would have scored had the ball not bounced into the stands.<\/p>\n
However, the Tides responded with a run in the top of the third inning. Mike Siani led off with a walk. Luis V\u00e1zquez then singled to center field and tried to make it to second base, but Ellis threw it to Ornelas in time to prevent the double. Enrique Bradfield Jr. was next and hit a ball to first base, where Ernesto Martinez Jr. overthrew catcher J.C. Escarra for a run-scoring fielder\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n
It stayed 1-1 thanks to Kloffenstein and Norfolk starter Trace Bright, who retired 10 straight RailRiders at one point and allowed one unearned run and four hits in six innings with no walks and five strikeouts.<\/p>\n
But when Enoli Paredes relieved Bright in the bottom of the seventh, the RailRiders were able to reclaim the lead.<\/p>\n
Henry was hit by a pitch. Paredes then threw a base on balls to Ellis, and Kenedy Corona hit a sacrifice bunt to send Henry to third base and Ellis to second.<\/p>\n
Ornelas then walked to make it bases loaded, and Paredes threw four balls again to walk Escarra, sending Henry home. Marco Luciano hit a sacrifice fly, which scored Ellis and gave the RailRiders a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one thing this offense has done really well all season long,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cIf they\u2019re not scoring runs, they\u2019re not giving up. They are going up there, making adjustments, figuring stuff out. They\u2019re going up there still trying to do the other good at-bats, and that\u2019s one thing that I trust in those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Messinger (5-1) relieved Kloffenstein in the sixth inning and threw two perfect innings with two strikeouts.<\/p>\n
But in the eighth, V\u00e1zquez and Bradfield opened the inning with singles. Coleman relieved, and his first pitch was to Heston Kjerstad, who hit a perfect bunt single up the third-base line to load the bases. Christian Encarnacion-Strand followed with a sacrifice fly to score V\u00e1zquez and cut the deficit to 3-2.<\/p>\n
Coleman fanned Creed Willems for the second. Bradfield and Kjerstad then tried a double steal, but Escarra was able to throw Kjerstad out and end the Tides\u2019 threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ready to throw the second on that play,\u201d Escarra said. \u201cHe got a really bad jump. I was actually going to go to third base because he didn\u2019t go at first, and I saw Bradfield go to third base. But in the corner of my eye, he (Kjerstad) had a bad jump and went late, so it just gave me instincts to throw to second base and get that free out before he was able to score. That was a huge out, because we had two outs and we got out the inning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnathan Rodr\u00edguez walked to kick things off in the top of the ninth, and Jos\u00e9 Barrero hit a one-out single. Mike Siani hit a comebacker that Coleman fielded and threw to third to get the second out. V\u00e1zquez then fouled out to Martinez to end the game and earn his second save.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur bullpen has been solid for the most part, and there aren\u2019t a lot of guys in that bullpen that you don\u2019t have faith in,\u201d Kloffenstein said. \u201cWhen you turn around, and you see who\u2019s coming in, you\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, I feel like we\u2019ve got a good shot.\u2019 I really liked Mess\u2019s stuff tonight, and I have somewhat similar stuff to some degree, so I knew he would be a good candidate, and Carson Coleman\u2019s got an almost unhittable fastball, so whenever he comes in the game, and if he\u2019s throwing strikes, we know that we\u2019re in a pretty good spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duncan added that while the past few games haven\u2019t gone the team\u2019s way, the RailRiders will try to keep their momentum going.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomorrow\u2019s going to be a brand new day. We take the energy from winning a close game, knowing that we got the team, talent, tools and the ability to win these close games; that gives you confidence if we happen to be in another one tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cMore than anything, we\u2019re facing a new pitcher; we got a new one on the mound. It\u2019s a whole new ball game. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen; we just got to be ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Holden Mostofsky Correspondent MOOSIC \u2014 Adam Kloffenstein and the bullpen helped the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre RailRiders win a pitchers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[51447,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-232558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-rail-riders","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232558","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=232558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}