Lynchburg Hillcats 6, Potomac Nationals 2
Box Score · Hillcats improve to 13-12
As good as Thomas Pannone and Triston McKenzie have been for Lynchburg this year, Shao-Ching Chiang continues to absolutely dominate as well.
Chiang tossed eight innings yesterday, giving up two runs on six hits while striking out three and actually raised his season ERA to 1.83 in the process. The 23-year old Taiwanese right-hander pitches to contact and has been extremely effective, eating innings at a tremendous rate already.
He was aided offensively by the bottom half of the batting order as four of the 5-9 hitters all had multi-hit games. Sicnarf Loopstock in particular had himself a game, socking two doubles and helping the team score more than enough runs to walk away with a win.
Lake County Captains 2, Quad Cities River Bandits 6
Box Score · Captains fall to 10-17
Chalk up another interesting Brady Aiken start.
The former number one overall pick continues to have trouble with his command, but he was effectively wild yesterday. Aiken gave up three runs on four hits in five innings, but walked four batters and had two wild pitches while only striking out three.
Thus far in 2017, Aiken has walked 21 batters while only striking out 13. Strong command is usually the last thing to return for a player coming off Tommy John surgery, so we’ll just have to keep being patient as Aiken works out the kinks this season.
Offensively, Lake County only mustered five hits, but two of them were seventh inning solo home runs from first baseman Emmanuel Tapia (his organization-leading sixth) and shortstop Luke Wakamatsu.
No one else had an extra base hit or multi-hit game for the Captains, and reliever Domingo Jimenez put the game out of reach by surrendering three runs in his one inning of work.
Triple-A Columbus and Double-A Akron’s games were both postponed due to rain.