Otters continue streak on Salute to the Negro Leagues Night

The Evansville Otters continued their winning ways Saturday night by picking up their sixth victory in a row, as they took the second game of a weekend series with the Windy City ThunderBolts by a final score of 7-1 on Salute to the Negro Leagues Night.

Both settled in early while wearing their replica flannel Negro Leagues team uniforms, going the first two innings scoreless.

The ThunderBolts scored the first run of the ballgame in the top of the third inning, when Brynn Martinez hit a 1-3 comebacker to score Rob Calabrese from third.

The Otters answered right back in the bottom half of that inning, tying the game on a sac fly to left field from Andy DeJesus, scoring Cristopher Pujols, who started the inning with a double off the wall.

The Otters took the lead in the bottom of the fourth on a costly fielding error committed by the ThunderBolts that allowed Elijah MacNamee to score from third on an infield pop-up with two outs.

Riley Krane would extend the Otters’ lead in the top of the fifth with a two-out, two-run, opposite field home run to left.

The Otters scored three more runs in the bottom of the seventh, after J.R. Davis singled home Josh Henderson from third, Miles Gordon scored on a wild pitch, and Riley Krane drove in his third RBI of the game with a sac fly to left.

In the eighth, Tyler Spring came on to pitch a 1-2-3 inning in relief of University of Southern Indiana graduate Austin Gossmann, who had allowed only one run to score over seven strong innings of work, striking out seven without walking a batter in his first professional start.

Spring would go on to extend his scoreless appearance streak to 11 games and 16 innings to begin the season.

The win would be Gossmann’s second of the season. Tyler Thornton took the loss, his second.

The Otters will look to extend their winning streak to seven games Sunday night, as they welcome four-legged fans to the ballpark in the second Dog Days of Summer this year at Bosse Field. First pitch will be at 5:05 p.m, with a 4:50 p.m. pregame show on Frontier League LiveTV.