WHAT THE BOX SCORE WON’T TELL YOU
The Rock Cats’ 5-4 win over the Portland Sea Dogs on Tuesday placed Rashad Eldridge and Gil Velazquez on the hero’s podium and for good reason.
With the score tied in the home 10th, Eldridge rammed a leadoff triple high off the 16-foot wall in right-center field. Velazquez, perhaps the most overlooked and underrated player on the team and maybe in the entire Twins system, wasted little time in chasing Eldridge home by launching a game-winning sacrifice fly.
But the contributions of both players went much deeper.
In the seventh inning, Portland had runners on first and second with two down when Jeff Natale tapped a grounder past the mound. Velazquez charged in, bare-handed the ball and fired to first base for the inning-ending out.
In the Portland ninth, mega-prospect Jacoby Ellsbury stood at second with two down, again with Natale at bat. The Hamden native chopped what looked like a routine grounder toward Velazquez but the ball took a strange hop. Velazquez instinctively adjusted and made a play that may look routine in the scorebook but it saved a run and allowed the game to go into extra innings.
The Rock Cats tied the game with three runs in the eighth, thanks in large part to one of five Portland errors. Before any of the runs had come across, Velazquez came up with runners at first and second with two outs. He battled former UConn righty Mike James for a walk, which loaded the bases and prolonged the frame.
Eldridge was 1-for-18 coming into his game-changing at-bat, but the tone was set in his previous time at the plate. Rock Cats hitting coach Floyd Rayford has been urging his pupils to hit the ball where it’s pitched and Eldridge lined it hard to left, but right at the left fielder.
It set the tone for his game-winning heroics.
“When you hit a ball hard like that, you know that your timing is perfect,” Eldridge said about the lineout. “It felt good and I was (anxious) to get another at-bat. I wasn’t mad that I got out. I was kind of happy because I got my timing down.”
With the score tied in the home 10th, Eldridge rammed a leadoff triple high off the 16-foot wall in right-center field. Velazquez, perhaps the most overlooked and underrated player on the team and maybe in the entire Twins system, wasted little time in chasing Eldridge home by launching a game-winning sacrifice fly.
But the contributions of both players went much deeper.
In the seventh inning, Portland had runners on first and second with two down when Jeff Natale tapped a grounder past the mound. Velazquez charged in, bare-handed the ball and fired to first base for the inning-ending out.
In the Portland ninth, mega-prospect Jacoby Ellsbury stood at second with two down, again with Natale at bat. The Hamden native chopped what looked like a routine grounder toward Velazquez but the ball took a strange hop. Velazquez instinctively adjusted and made a play that may look routine in the scorebook but it saved a run and allowed the game to go into extra innings.
The Rock Cats tied the game with three runs in the eighth, thanks in large part to one of five Portland errors. Before any of the runs had come across, Velazquez came up with runners at first and second with two outs. He battled former UConn righty Mike James for a walk, which loaded the bases and prolonged the frame.
Eldridge was 1-for-18 coming into his game-changing at-bat, but the tone was set in his previous time at the plate. Rock Cats hitting coach Floyd Rayford has been urging his pupils to hit the ball where it’s pitched and Eldridge lined it hard to left, but right at the left fielder.
It set the tone for his game-winning heroics.
“When you hit a ball hard like that, you know that your timing is perfect,” Eldridge said about the lineout. “It felt good and I was (anxious) to get another at-bat. I wasn’t mad that I got out. I was kind of happy because I got my timing down.”
posted by Ken Lipshez at
11:11 AM
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