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Blue Wahoos Strike Out 19 In Win Over Rocket City
May 23, 2021
On this Saturday, the Blue Wahoos started the show well before the fireworks.
Playing before an overflow, energized sellout crowd of 5,038, the Blue Wahoos lit up the scoreboard with runs in each of the first four innings, then had a trio of pitchers pop a combined 19 strikeouts in a 6-2 victory against the Rocket City Trash Pandas to clinch their weekend series.
It provided plenty of entertainment in a setting featuring the concourses crowded with fans and the outfield berm filled with families on every square foot of grass.
“I think anyone would tell you, when you are playing on that field, you feed off the crowd,” said Blue Wahoos hitting coach Scott Seabol. “The crowd was awesome.”
Eight of the nine hitters in the Blue Wahoos lineup factoring into the scoring.
One of those was cleanup batter Lazaro Alonso, who blasted an opposite field homer over the left field wall in the fourth for the Blue Wahoos final run and his first homer in this ballpark.
Like so often this season, there was scoring efficiency. The Blue Wahoos had six runs on six hits, including RBI from the bottom third of the lineup. Five of the runs were produced on two-out hits.
“I feel like to this point in the season, we have been taking great at-bats and hitting the ball hard, but we were just missing that big two out, two-run single.”
That changed in the first inning when Tristan Pompey smashed a two-out, two-run single.
After Rocket City scored a pair of runs in the third, the Blue Wahoos answered in the bottom of that inning with RBI hits from Connor Justus and Devin Hairston.
Those clutch hits neutralized the 15 strikeouts recorded by Trash Pandas’ pitchers. The teams totaled a combined 34 strikeouts, but Pensacola held a 6-2 lead through the final five innings.
“I felt like our pitching staff has been doing a great job keeping us in games and then allowing to come back late,” Seabol said. “So it was nice to help them out early and take the pressure off a little bit.”
The Blue Wahoos end a two-week, 12-game homestand with Sunday’s series finale against the Trash Pandas. They have taken four of the first five games in a first-ever series between the teams and return of Pensacola’s Jay Bell as Rocket City manager.
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