Trending
The Altoona Curve offense came alive late to defeat the Erie SeaWolves with a 6-2 win in front of 6,813 fans at PNG Field Sunday night.
Both teams were scoreless through five as Altoona starter Thomas Harrington and Erie's Austin Bergner went toe-to-toe in a pitcher's duel.
It wasn't until both hurlers were taken out after the fifth inning when the game opened up offensively.
"They have a good bullpen," Curve manager Robby Hammock said. "I was looking at their bullpen stats today, and their bullpen leads the league and era. We just have been able to turn up the bats late in games recently."
First, it was Erie to get on the board with two runs off the Curve's J.C. Flowers, before Altoona plated two in the bottom half of the sixth to tie the game.
Designated hitter Yoyner Fajardo led off the sixth inning with a walk before back-to-back pop outs had him at first base with two outs. Fajardo stole second while left fielder Dustin Peterson was at the plate and he subsequently scored Fajardo with a single to center field.
Sammy Siani then tripled home Peterson just four pitches later to tie the game.
From there it was all Curve both offensively and on the mound as reliever Eddy Yean shut the door on Erie in the sixth, seventh and eighth inning. Lefty Tyler Samaniego would shut the door in the ninth.
"The bullpen came out with some fire and understood what's at stake with having a chance to take a series today," Harrington said. "They came out firing and they were making great pitches props to them."
Altoona plated four runs off the SeaWolves in the home half of the seventh courtesy of some timely hitting and taking advantage of Erie mistakes.
Catcher Wyatt Hendrie knocked a one-out single to get the offense in the hit column before stealing second with shortstop Kervin Pichardo at the plate. Pichardo would get hit by a pitch to set up Fajardo's RBI-single to score Hendrie.
Pichardo came around to score on Joe Perez's RBI-single to put the Curve up 4-2. Tsung-Che Cheng was tabbed to pinch run for Perez and promptly stole second. He advanced to third on a throwing error by Erie catcher Eliezer Alfonzo while Fajardo would score.
Cheng scored on first baseman Seth Beer's ground ball to second base as Cheng just beat the throw home on the fielder's choice to put the Curve up 6-2.
It was another complete performance for Hammock's squad that they struggled to find for most of the early season.
"The bullpen is kind of starting to level off after some shell shock at the beginning and this is starting to look like what we had in mind coming out of spring training," Hammock said. "We just went through a funk there, and we're starting to pull out of it."
Stellar night
Curve starter Thomas Harrington was nearly unhittable against Erie Sunday.
He tossed five innings and allowed one hit while striking out five in his second start of the week.
"Coming in early in the week, you just kind of see what the hitters are trying to do that week," Harrington said. "It changes week to week in what hitters see and what they don't see. So, really you just try to execute your pitches today and it worked out."
In his first outing of the week, he allowed six runs, but only one of those was earned. He struck out five Tuesday as well, but allowed two home runs in a losing effort.
Sunday's performance is the type of bounce-back performance Hammock has come to expect from Harrington.
"The thing about knowing Harrington is that performance didn't surprise me," Hammock said. "He's just got that mentality to be able to bounce back like that. He's prepared. He's able to make adjustments and he showed it today."
Win streak
With Sunday night's victory, the Curve's winning streak moved to four. It's the second series in a row where Altoona has lost the first two games of the series before rattling off four in a row.
More often than not this season, the Curve have been on the wrong end of streaks including a franchise-record 15-game losing streak in May.
"It's been good to see the team turn around and be able to do that," Hammock said. "When we were going through that stretch we definitely weren't able to do things like that."
Saturday night
Saturday served up a spectacular win for Altoona as it scored an 11-8 come-from-behind win.
It was a back-and-forth contest that saw the Curve propelled by a walk-off three-run home run by Brenden Dixon.
He led all Altoona hitters with four RBI and had two hits on the evening. He was among six Curve hitters who had multiple hits.
Next up
The Curve have off tonight. They head to Bowie for a six-game series beginning Tuesday. Po-Yu Chen will get the ball for Altoona in the series opening.
In his last outing, Chen went 4ª innings and allowed four runs on five hits.