Lynx turn the tables on Hens, earn series split
5/19/2001Blanked by the Mud Hens a night earlier, the Ottawa Lynx nearly returned the favor last night, taking a 3-1 victory over Toledo at Skeldon Stadium to split this four-game series.
Ottawa starter Bobby Munoz yielded a run on six hits over seven innings, then turned things over to relievers Sean Spencer and Darwin Cubillan to answer the complete-game shutout tossed Thursday night by Toledo's Mark Johnson in a 4-0 Hens win.
Toledo (16-25) starts an eight-game road trip tonight at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
After Matt Perisho struggled through a scoreless, two-inning, 48-pitch start on rehab assignment for the Hens, control trouble hurt his replacement in the third.
Adam Bernero got the first two batters he faced on flyouts before walking Mark Smith and hitting Brian Schneider with a pitch. Lynx left fielder Dan McKinley made him pay by hitting a two-run double to the corner in right.
McKinley also provided Ottawa's third run on a solo homer to right leading off the ninth against Bernero (2-5).
“On the double, Bernero just got a changeup with two strikes up in the zone and I hooked it down the line,” McKinley said. “Lucky enough there were two guys on base and I got a couple of ribbies (RBIs).
“On the homer, it was two strikes again. I missed two fastballs that I thought I was right on, and then he got a splitter up in the zone and I got the head out on it. It was just a couple of mistakes.”
The Hens answered with a run in their half of the third before an inning-ending, line-drive double play.
Brian Rios and David Lindstrom opened the third with singles and were advanced by Pedro Santana's sacrifice bunt. Jermaine Allensworth followed with a bloop single to right to plate Rios and send Lindstrom to third. But Munoz snared Giomar Guevara's liner and fired to first to double up Allensworth.
“You can only hit the ball, you can't direct it,” Toledo manager Bruce Fields said of Guevara's ill-fated liner. “G (Guevara) put a good swing on it and, in that situation, when you hit a line drive up the middle, you don't expect the pitcher to react like that. Even I thought that ball was up the middle. He just stuck his glove out and the ball went right in it.
“After that, we couldn't string any hits together back-to-back.”
Over the final six innings, Toledo managed just three hits.
NOTE: Detroit Tiger right-hander Brian Moehler will start for the Mud Hens tomorrow at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Moehler, on rehab assignment, has been bothered by tendinitis in his throwing shoulder. He was 12-9 with a 4.50 ERA with Detroit last year.