— Tyler Eppler (pictured) had his second standout start of the young season, throwing six shutout innings as Indianapolis (3-5) beat Toledo, 5-1. Eppler allowed just one hit, walked one and fanned four. He threw 50 of 71 pitches for strikes and got eight ground outs, compared to two fly outs. In eleven innings so far, he’s allowed no runs, four hits and one walk. Eric Wood led the offense, going 2-4 with a double and his first HR. Max Moroff was 1-3 with two walks.
Gift Ngoepe: 0-4
Jose Osuna: 1-4, BB
Elias Diaz: 1-4
Pat Light: 2 IP, BB, 2 K
— Altoona (5-3) edged Akron, 3-2. Austin Coley pitched well in making a spot start after Brandon Waddell was scratched for as-yet unknown reasons. He went five and a third innings, allowing two runs, both of which scored after he left. Coley gave up just two hits, walked three and struck out five. Kevin Kramer went deep twice, with the second one breaking a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning. Kramer went 3-4 overall and has three HRs on the year. Pablo Reyes and Edwin Espinal each went 2-4, with Reyes getting a triple. The Curve made things harder on themselves by getting two runners picked off and one thrown out trying to move up on a short passed ball.
Kevin Newman: 0-3, BB
Connor Joe: 0-3, BB
Jordan Luplow: 1-4
— Mitch Keller bounced back from a rough first start as Bradenton (8-1) won the first game of its scheduled (i.e., not rainout-related) doubleheader with Tampa, 4-1. The win was the Marauders’ eighth straight. Keller allowed one run on three hits and a walk over six innings, while fanning four. Ke’Bryan Hayes was 2-3 with a triple.
Cole Tucker: 1-2, BB, 2 SB (7-7 SB so far)
Will Craig: 1-3
Logan Hill: 0-3, 3 K
Kevin Krause: 0-3
It took extra innings for the Marauders finally to lose one in game two as they dropped a 2-1 decision. Logan Sendelbach gave up one run on four hits and two walks over five innings. He struck out three. Sam Street took the loss, giving up a walkoff infield single in the bottom of the eighth following a walk and two steals. The Marauders had little success against Kyle Haynes, whom the Pirates traded for Chris Stewart (and who’s way too old to be at this level). They had only four hits in the game, three by Alfredo Reyes.
Cole Tucker: 0-4
Will Craig: 0-4 (now batting .176)
Casey Hughston: 0-1, 2 BB (only two Ks in last 13 plate appearances)
— West Virginia (1-7) went back to its losing ways, dropping a 14-5 blowout to Lexington. Starter Oddy Nunez had a frightful line, but deserved better. Officially, he gave up six runs, two earned, in three innings on nine hits. He walked none and fanned three. Even the two earned runs, though, scored due to defensive blunders. These included a double play grounder that Trae Arbet whiffed on.* There was also a bouncer on which Carlos Munoz could easily have flipped to Nunez, but on which he instead made a very half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to beat the batter to first. There were also some very weak hits apart from the bad defense. The Power actually kept it close at first, but the game got out of hand when Dylan Prohoroff had a control meltdown after relieving Nunez. Sandy Santos went 3-4 with his first HR and Logan Ratledge hit his second HR.
Hunter Owen: 0-5
Blake Cederlind: 3 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, BB, 2 K
*: As a cautionary note about the game log descriptions at MiLB.com, the grounder to Arbet was an easy bouncer, but was described in the log as a “sharp line drive” to right. Maybe the robot doesn’t just write the recaps.