Much like Saturday night’s contest, the game started with a pair of scoreless innings, starting pitchers Watland and Carson LaRue carved through the innings efficiently.
The scoreless tie was broken by Evansville in the third, as Anthony Torreullas hit his second home run of the season. Three batters later, Elijah MacNamee answered with a solo home run of his own, expanding the Otters’ lead to 2-0.
Evansville’s lead was doubled in the sixth, kicked off with MacNamee’s second solo home run of the day. Later in the inning, J.R. Davis hit an RBI single to add to the lead.
The lead hit 5-0 in the seventh when Andy Armstrong hit his first home run of the season.
Finally, Gateway found offense in the seventh as Trevor Achenbach hit his league-leading 15th home run of 2022, a solo shot.
The Otters backed up Watland in the eighth, giving him another run of insurance, this time on a sacrifice fly RBI from Torreullas.
Gateway managed one more run off Watland in the ninth, a solo home run from Isaac Benard, but would stay four runs down.
The 6-2 advantage gave Evansville their sixth win in a row and claimed the series win at Gateway.
Watland pitched all nine innings to the win, giving up two runs on for hits, and recording a personal season-high 10 strikeouts. Carson LaRue received the loss, allowing five runs on eight hits in 6.2 innings.
MacNamee and Davis each recorded multi-hit days with MacNamee and Torreullas clocking multi-RBI games.
The holiday weekend four-game set concludes Monday night as the Grizzlies and Otters play at GCS Credit Union Ballpark at 6:45 p.m. Coverage begins on the Evansville Otters YouTube page at 6:35 p.m.
