CURVE, Pa. – In the first extra-inning game at Peoples Natural Gas Field under Minor League Baseball’s new pace of play rules, the Altoona Curve fell in 10 innings, 9-6, to the Erie SeaWolves on Wednesday.
(Photo courtesy of Altoona Curve)
The Curve (9-8) and SeaWolves (7-11) split the rain-shortened, two-game series in Altoona heading into Thursday’s league-wide off day.
Erie cracked three homers against Altoona relievers from the eighth inning beyond. Gabriel Quintana and Josh Lester went back-to-back off two different Curve relievers in the eighth and Domicic Ficociello launched a two-run homer in the tenth.
Logan Hill swatted a go-ahead, three-run homer over the left-field seats in the sixth to put the Curve ahead, 4-3. Ke’Bryan Hayes and Jason Martin delivered RBIs for Altoona in the bottom of the seventh inning to answer a pair scored by Erie in the top half of the inning. Back in the fifth, the Curve evened the score 1-1 after Stephen Alemais tripled with two outs and scored on a double by Christian Kelley.
Dario Agrazal started a solid 6.2 innings for the Curve and made his way into the seventh in his second consecutive outing. He retired 12 of the first 13 SeaWolves he faced and allowed a single run to pass in the fifth. Agrazal was unable to finish the seventh when Erie connected on three straight singles to begin the inning and was pulled after two runs scored with the top of the order coming around for the fourth time. Sean Keselica struck out Jacob Robson to end the inning and stranded Agrazal’s final baserunner.
Kelly had another fine day at the plate with a 2-for-3 performance with an RBI double. He completed the homestand with three straight multi-hit games in which he went 7-for-12 with a homer, two doubles and five RBIs.
Hayes also notched a two-hit game for Altoona as the Curve fell to 2-1 in extra-inning contests this season.
After a day off on Thursday, the Curve will head to Harrisburg for three games. Left-hander Brandon Waddell (0-0, 2.04) will start for Altoona and the Senators turn to right-hander Wirkin Estevez (0-2, 6.75) in the series opener on Friday night at 7 p.m.
The Curve will return to Peoples Natural Gas Field for an eight-game homestand beginning on Thursday, May 3 against the Erie SeaWolves.
