Indians minor league recap: Eric Haase has the best game of his career

There were several unlikely heroes for the Indians affiliates last night.

Struggling catching prospect Eric Haase had an absolutely monster game for Akron, while struggling first base prospect Emmanuel Tapia did the exact same thing for Mahoning Valley in an offensive explosion.

Japanese pitcher Toru Murata had one of his best performances of the season to lead Columbus to a shutout victory while free agent signing Trevor Foss tossed a complete game for Lake County.

Let’s get to it:

Columbus Clippers 2, Toledo Mud Hens 0

Box Score · Clippers improve to to 74-54

The red hot Columbus Clippers continued rolling with an impressive pitching performance.

Toru Murata had an inspired performance out of the starting pitching role, tossing 6.1 shutout innings, giving up four hits and two walks while striking out one. Tommy Hunter, Joseph Colon and Austin Adams combined to complete the shutout.

Offensively, the Clippers had no extra base hits and no one had a multi-hit game, but Bradley Zimmer did reach base twice with the only walk of the game for the Columbus offense, scoring one of their two runs. Giovanny Urshela had a sacrifice fly to score one run and Michael Choice had an RBI single.

Akron RubberDucks 8, Bowie Baysox 5

Box Score · RubberDucks improve to 65-60

Eric Haase had one of the biggest games of his entire career to lead Akron to victory over Bowie. Haase went 4-5 at the plate with a double and two home runs. Nellie Rodriguez joined the home run parade with his 23rd of the season while Greg Allen went 2-3 with a stolen base.

Pitching-wise, Nick Pasquale spread out three runs over five innings while striking out five and walking three to keep the team in the game. Nick Hynes gave up the lead in the bottom of the eighth but the RubberDucks scored three runs in the top of the ninth to win it.

Lynchburg Hillcats 6, Myrtle Beach Pelicans 5

Box Score · Hillcats move to 78-48

Lynchburg probably shouldn’t have won this game. They were outhit 10-6, had two errors to zero for Myrtle Beach, but one big inning was all they needed.

The Hillcats scored four times in the fourth inning thanks in part to a big two-run double from Bobby Bradley and a two-run home run by Dorssys Paulino.

Matt Esparza had a quality start for Lynchburg, throwing six innings and giving up two runs on five hits while striking out five and walking two. Matt Whitehouse ran into a little bit of trouble in the seventh, but Trevor Frank and Mitch Brown shut the door to seal the win.

Lake County Captains 0, Fort Wayne TinCaps 2

Box Score · Captains fall to to 64-59

Recent free agent signing Trevor Foss was brilliant, but Fort Wayne pitcher Thomas Dorminy was even better. Foss pitched an eight-inning complete game, striking out seven and walking zero on just 78 pitches, but a two-run home run in the fifth inning sunk him.

Dorminy struck out 10 Captains batters over seven shutout innings to pick up the win.

Willi Castro and Ordimar Valdez both had two hits for Lake County in the loss.

Mahoning Valley Scrappers 8, State College Spikes 13

Box Score · Scrappers fall to 29-30

This game was a complete slobberknocker which saw nearly 40 hits combined over nine innings of play.

Mahoning Valley had three batters with three-hit games as Andrew Calica, Emmanuel Tapia and Nathan Winfrey had three hits, but all of Tapia’s hits were doubles, which was extra impressive.

Alex Pantoja, Mitch Longo and Erlin Cerda also had multi-hit games for the Scrappers.

On most nights, 16 hits and eight runs would be enough, but Scrappers pitchers gave up a whopping 23 hits on the evening.

Juan Hillman had his worst start as a professional, giving up six runs in three innings on 10 hits. Switch-pitcher Ryan Perez gave up five more runs over the next two innings on six hits as every member of the State College starting lineup had a multi-hit game.

AZL Indians 6, AZL Padres 2

Box Score · Indians improve to 28-21

The AZL Indians were able to put six runs on the board despite only collecting four hits overall thanks in part to three errors for the AZL Padres which led to multiple unearned runs.

The Indians had no extra base hits or stolen bases but some timely walks, sacrifices and taking advantage of extra outs allowed them to score three times in the third inning and three more in the sixth. They scored all three runs in the sixth on a ridiculous four wild pitches in the inning from Padres pitchers.

Felix Tati paced the Indians with a strong scoreless five innings and the bullpen did the rest of the work to hold the lead and seal the win.

DSL Indians 1, DSL Rangers1 12

Box Score · Indians fall to 24-42

The free-falling DSL Indians continued their incredible collapse, this time getting absolutely blown out by the DSL Rangers1. Felix Fernandez and Jonathan Lopez had two hits apiece for the Indians, but the Rangers teed off on the bullpen for nine of their 12 total runs.