EVANSVILLE, Ind. – The Evansville Otters (16-19) dropped both games of the doubleheader to the Washington Wild Things (21-15) on Thursday night.
Game one saw Parker Brahms get his sixth start of the year and he pitched a gem. He faced the minimum through three innings but was matched on the other end by the Wild Things starter.
The offense struggled to jump start things as through the first three innings, the only marks were a Graham Brown single and LJ Jones walk.
After another 1-2-3 inning from Brahms, he stranded two runners to keep the shutout. He entered the sixth, still knotted at zero. Washington loaded the bases with two outs off of two hit batters and a walk. After it appeared he had gotten a fly out, he was called for a balk that scored the runner from third.
Evansville threatened in the bottom of the sixth after a Dennis Pierce single and a couple of wild pitches that allowed him to reach third base. G. Brown hit a sharp grounder to first and as the first baseman tossed the ball to the pitcher, Brown dove for first and appeared to beat it out, but was called out by the first base umpire, keeping the score at 1-0.
Brahms worked a clean seventh inning to finish off the first complete game by any Otter this year. Evansville came to bat in the seventh but couldn’t push across Pavin Parks after his one out single and fell in game one of the doubleheader 1-0.
Game 2
In game two, the Otters sent out Ryan Wiltse to start. He worked a clean first two innings, which included two strikeouts.
In the home half of the second, the Evansville offense got it going. David Mendham walked to lead off the inning. He was followed by a Jones two-run home run that wrapped around the left field foul pole to put the Otters up 2-0. Later in the inning, G. Brown drove in two on a single to extend it to 4-0.
A couple of innings later in the fifth, the Wild Things were able to get one back. Wiltse was relieved in the fifth. His final line was four and two-thirds, three hits given up, just one run, a walk and five strikeouts.
In the sixth, Washington opened it up with five to take the lead 6-4. They then hit a two-run home run to make it 8-4.
The Otters would fight back in the final frame. They loaded the bases with nobody out and scored on an RBI groundout from Logan Brown and an RBI single from Keenan Taylor. The final would be 8-6 in favor of Washington.
