The Evansville Otters let a late lead slip away as they fell 8-3 to the Gateway Grizzlies on Thursday night at GCS Ballpark.
Following a Travis Harrison two-out double in the first inning, Brant Whiting singled him home to put Evansville up 1-0 early.
Gateway tied the game in the bottom of first on a Justin Ellison RBI single to right.
J.J Gould put the Otters back in front with an RBI double in the second.
An RBI double off the bat of Trae Santos tied the game for Gateway in the fifth.
The Otters jumped back in front on David Cronin’s sacrifice fly in the top of the seventh.
Gateway took the lead for the first time with two runs in the bottom of the seventh. Paul Russo scored on a wild pitch and Brennan Morgan gave Gateway the lead with an RBI single to center.
Trae Santos broke the game open with a grand slam in the eighth to make it an 8-3 game, the final score by which the Grizzlies went on to win by.
Max MacNabb gets the win for Gateway. MacNabb tossed seven innings allowing three runs, two earned while striking out seven.
Randy Wynne is tagged with the loss for the Otters, his seventh of the year. Wynne went seven innings, allowing four runs on 11 hits while striking out nine.
Chris Metrick collected the save after throwing two scoreless innings to close out the game.
Evansville hits the road and travels to O’Fallon to take on the first-place River City Rascals starting tomorrow at 6:35 p.m. at CarShield Field.
Coverage of the series can be found on WUEV 91.5 FM presented by Kruckemeyer & Cohn with Sam Jellinek (play-by-play) on the call.
Evansville returns to Bosse Field on July 31 to face the Joliet Slammers which kicks off a six game homestand.
