Going to keep these short…a lot of the stuff we got last night is going to be saved for something you’re going to see in tomorrow’s Trentonian.
Anyway, here’s the gist of last night’s game. Thunder get out to 14-2 lead, hang on for 14-12 win after Reading sends tying and winning runs to the plate. It was a win that seemed to lose its luster a bit, but had they lost, it could have been absolutely devastating.
“It was a very draining contest, that’ll drain the life out of you,” said Thunder manager Tony Franklin. “We weren’t very good coming down stretch, but nonetheless we got the job done. That’s what we set out to do this afternoon. We got the W, that was good, but it takes a lot of doing when you play like that.”
“Even with the lead that we had in the game, I’m always concerned. I walked out there and made a pitching change earlier in the game, and I told them that it’s very easy to lose your focus in a game like this. This is the time that we have to stay focused…I’m never very comfortable in games like this, because I know the tendencies. It isn’t that we weren’t trying, we were trying like hell. But they put some hits and runs together and before you know it, they were back in this game.”
Brett Marshall picked up his 13th win of the season on Thursday.
– Much like Shaeffer Hall the other night, Brett Marshall put together a really solid outing until his last inning of work…Reading scored 6 in the sixth, with three of those runs charged to Marshall, but both he and the Thunder held on for the win.
“It was big,” Marshall said. “I felt like last night kind of got us going back in the right direction, and I felt like we were going to come out playing pretty good today. We’ve got to finish our season off strong, we can’t get beat down like that. Losing seven in a row, we can’t do that to ourselves.”
– Kevin Mahoney had been waiting a long time to break out like he did on Thursday. After a 6-for-52 stretch, Mahoney went 2-for-4 with three runs scored and a two-run homer on Thursday.
“We’ll see tomorrow if I’ve finally snapped out of it,” he said. “Even this series, the first game where I struck out three times, I felt extremely comfortable in the box again, and it’s been a while since I’ve felt that. So, we’ll see how next series goes, but it’s feeling good. I’m feeling comfortable, the swing is there, I’m taking pitchers into deeper counts. I’m getting a lot of positive feedback so far, and I’m sticking with it.”
Mike Ashmore, mashmore98 AT gmail.com
