By Josh Hirsch/Grand Prairie AirHogs
All nine Grand Prairie AirHogs hitters had at least one hit and eight scored one run as the balanced AirHogs offense used a six-run fourth inning to beat the El Paso Diablos 8-4 in front of a Grand Bank of Texas GPISD Education Day crowd of 4,319 at QuikTrip Park on Tuesday morning.
Maikol Gonzalez homered on the third pitch of the game to give El Paso (1-5) an early lead off John Brownell (1-1), but the AirHogs starter retired nine of the next 10 hitters with five strikeouts to stop any momentum from the homer.
The AirHogs (4-2) tied the game in the second, getting a leadoff triple from Andres Rodriguez when Kory Drew and Brian Joynt survived a scary mid-air collision in left-center when they both tried to dive for the ball. Greg Porter followed with an RBI groundout to tie the game, but the Diablos got that run back in the fourth on a Patrick Arlis RBI double.
El Paso starter Eric Blackwell (0-2) could not hold the lead for long, as the AirHogs used four short hits and one long one to take control in the bottom of that inning.
Bridger Hunt started it with a swinging bunt single to third, and Trent Lockwood singled to right to put two on with no out, with both runners moving up on the throw. Rodriguez grounded out to tie the game and move Lockwood to third, and Porter mimicked Hunt with a swinging bunt single to third as well. After Brian Myrow struck out, David Thomas laid down a perfect bunt single with two outs to score Lockwood, and Chris McMurray followed with a long three-run homer to left-center to make it 6-2.
Yasutsugu Nishimoto had the fourth AirHogs’ infield hit of the frame when he lined one off the glove of a diving Bryan Frichter at short, and when JJ Muse’s throw in from right on Keanon Simon’s double got away from the infielders, Nishimoto scampered home with the final run of the inning.
Brownell got around a two-out single in the fifth, but allowed two hits to start the sixth. After Palmer Karr grounded out to move the runners up, Muse hit a sacrifice fly to make it 7-3, and Joynt singled to cut the AirHogs’ lead to three. But Brownell got Drew to foul out on a nice play by McMurray, and finished his day with a quick 1-2-3 seventh, finishing with seven hits, four runs, two walks and eight strikeouts to his name.
Griffin Bailey allowed a pair of one-out hits in the eighth, but got Muse on a groundout and struck out Joynt to end the threat, while Myrow hit his first AirHogs homer on a drive down the rightfield line leading off the bottom of the eighth to give the AirHogs a four-run cushion. Derrick Miramontes then came in for Grand Prairie and finished things off with a hitless, scoreless ninth.