Two Big Homers Lift B-Mets Over Erie in Game One

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Two Big Homers Lift B-Mets Over Erie in Game One

Binghamton Mets @ Erie Sea Wolves

April 14, 2015, Game 1

John Gant @ Warwick Saupold

Teams	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	R	H	E
Binghamton	4	0	2	0	0	1	0	7	9	0
Erie	1	0	2	2	1	0	0	6	12	1

W: Huchingson (1-0, 4.50 ERA); L: Mantiply (0-1, 2.70 ERA); S: Velasquez (2, 0.00 ERA)

The Highlights:

Pitchers

John Gant (12.27 ERA) – 3.2 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 2 SO, 79 Pitches (48 Strikes), 5 GO: 3 FO

Chase Huchingson – 2.1 IP, 3 H, R, 2 SO, 2 GO: 2 FO, 1 IR – 1 S

Jon Velasquez – 1 IP, H, 2 GO

Batters

Jared King – 1-4, SO

Brandon Nimmo – 1-3, R, BB, SO

T.J. Rivera – 3-4, 2 R

Aderlin Rodriguez – 1-2, 2 R, HR (1), 4 RBI (4), BB, GIDP

Gavin Cecchini – 2-3, R, 2B (1), HR (1), 3 RBI (6), CS

Recap:

The B-Mets got a couple of huge homeruns to overcome John Gant’s uneven performance in his AA debut Tuesday evening. Aderlin Rodriguez crushed a grand slam with two outs in the 1^st to give the B-Mets a comfortable 4-0 lead, but Erie would chip away at the lead until they tied it off of Chase Huchingson in the 5^th. The tie did not last very long though, as Gavin Cecchini led off the 6^th with his first AA blast of the season. Huchingson bounced back for a scoreless 6^th, and then Jon Velasquez picked up his 2^nd save of the season in the 7^th. Check out highlights from game one and more discussion on Gant below.

Game 1 Scoring Highlights

Nimmo got the 1^st inning rally going after battling back from an 0-2 count to take a walk – it was a great PA. T.J. Rivera followed with his first of three singles in game 1. After Jayce Boyd struck out swinging for the second out, Josh Rodriguez would get hit by a pitch to load the bases for Aderlin Rodriguez. Aderlin would hit his 3^rd career minor league grand slam to give the B-Mets a big 4-0 advantage – he actually had another bases loaded opportunity in the bottom of the 5^th, but he’d ground into a double play.

Aderlin had a Grand Slam with St. Lucie last year too

Jared King picked up this single with one out in the 2^nd, but he’d be stranded at 2B.

Switch-hitter King picks up a single from the left side

Rivera started the 3^rd inning rally with this single to LF.

All he does is hit... singles

After the next two B-Mets batters were retired, Aderlin Rodriguez would draw a walk to bring up Gavin Cecchini. Cecchini continued his torrid start with this double down the LF line.

But Cheech was not done, as he added this solo blast to LF leading off the 6^th, which gave the B-Mets the lead back for good.

Gant Coverage

The first 3 batters that Gant faced hit the ball very hard off of him – leadoff batter drove Nimmo to the warning track for an out, followed by a single laced into LF, and then a RBI double. Gant started to settle down after that, but Erie kept getting singles to fall in, which meant he was pitching in trouble most of the game. His changeup looked great all night, and was reportedly as slow as 69 MPH (!). He also threw a number of very good-looking curveballs, but had a few curvedud’s as well. His fastball maxed out around 88 MPH, and is clearly his weakest pitch. It does have some sink action, but he needs to have pinpoint control to get away with a fastball that is slower than Matt Harvey’s changeup – Gant did not have pinpoint control Tuesday evening. This was just the 4^th time in 35 starts since the beginning of 2013 that he didn’t finish 5 IP, and he likely would’ve been taken out even without a pitch count restriction. I didn’t expect Gant to be dominating AA out of the gate like he did the SAL, and there were still positive signs from this start, so don’t be concerned yet. Remember, he skipped A+, and even he didn’t know he was starting in AA until late in Spring Training, so this is a big adjustment for him.