Oilmen stymied by Snipes staff Whiting, Ind. – July 22, 2015 – Christian Howell may have delivered a complete game and yielded only three earned runs, but he was the game’s second-best pitcher on Wednesday night. The Minnesota State Mankato right-hander was outdueled by Lexington’s Noah Lamboley in a 4-1 Oilmen loss.
Lamboley held the Oilmen scoreless over seven innings while surrendering three hits and striking out four. He was lifted after throwing just 72 pitches over seven innings.
“That’s a good arm right there; that’s a good pitcher,” Oilmen manager Adam Enright said. “I don’t know why they pulled him, but I was extremely happy. If he didn’t get tired, we could have played about 40 innings and we wouldn’t have scored. That’s how good he was.”
But the Snipes bullpen was almost equally strong, as lefty Ian Hall retired both men he faced and Jake Sale got the final four outs to nail down his third save.
The best chance for the Oilmen came in the eighth, when they loaded the bases with no outs against Kody Silverthorn on an error and two walks. Silverthorn hit Fred Smart to force in a run, but then Sale came in and induced a fly ball to left from Jordan Lewis on a 3-2 pitch to retire the side.
Lamboley earned the win to improve to 3-2, while Howell was hit with the tough-luck loss to fall to 2-1.
Donovan Chandler ripped two hits, his second multi-hit game of the season. The Andrean alum enjoyed his first two-hit game since June 20, also against the Snipes.
The Oilmen have been limited to one run in three of the last four games.
“Look at the contact we had in fastball counts,” Enright said. “Not a lot of firm ground balls that had steam on them. Lots of popups and groundballs where we were really late. We didn’t put a whole lot of pressure on the defense.”
The Oilmen had runners at first and second against Sale in the ninth, but Tyler Sroczynski flied to right and Brian Seymour bounced to short to end the game.
Owen Miller and Deion Thompson had two hits apiece for Lexington.
The Snipes (21-14) now lead the Oilmen by ½ game for second-place in the Midwest Collegiate League standings. The Oilmen (20-14) are 4 ½ back of the first-place Hounds, who lost to Southland on Wednesday. The Oilmen visit the Hounds on Thursday at 5 p.m. at Lemont Sports Complex. |