CRESTWOOD, Ill. – Moving across the Chicago suburbs, the Evansville Otters continued their final road trip of the year by dropping a contest to the Windy City ThunderBolts 5-3 on Friday night at Ozinga Field.
Drawing first blood in the opening frame, the ThunderBolts (39-56) plated three to begin the night offensively. They added two more in the fifth inning.
The Otters (41-54) bats struggled to bring home potential runs. They stranded the bases loaded in the second inning and left two men in scoring position during the fifth.
Evansville scored in one inning tonight, waiting until the eighth to finally break through. Mason White led off with a solo home run. After a Pavin Parks single, Randy Bednar doubled him in and later scored to finalize the run totals.
Right-handed starter Zach Smith (7-8) took the loss for Evansville tonight. His pitch count worked high quickly, eventually allowing five runs on six hits in five innings with six strikeouts and two walks. Windy City’s Buddy Pindel (9-7) impressed, throwing seven scoreless innings of shutout baseball with nine strikeouts.
Out of the pen, Jon Beymer worked two scoreless innings seeing seven batters, while Tyler Ras pitched a one-two-three inning in the eighth.
With 11 hits to the ThunderBolts’ seven, the Otters were led by Bednar who had a 3-for-4 night at the plate with an RBI. Delvin Zinn and Gary Mattis also had multi-hit efforts.
In the final game of the 2024 season, the Otters look to snap their six-game slide and close out the year with a win tomorrow evening against Windy City. First pitch is set for 6:05 p.m. CT. Coverage is available on the Otters Digital Network and FloBaseball.
