EVERETT — Miguel Dilone’s sacrifice fly in the top of the 11th inning gave the Tri-City Dust Devils a 6-5 victory over the Everett AquaSox on Monday night at Everett Memorial Stadium.
Everett infielder Jared Cowan was on the mound when Shane Hoelscher led the inning off by lining a double into the left-field corner. Hoelscher advanced to third on a wild pitch, then scored on Dilone’s flyout to right-center.
Hoelscher and Ryan Garvey each had two hits to lead Tri-City (3-4 second half, 17-28 overall), which overcame committing five errors.
Cowan homered and Nelson Ward went 3-for-3 with a pair of doubles for Everett (4-3, 15-30). Cowan took the loss, pitching two innings in what was the fifth appearance by a Sox position player on the mound this season.
Everett seemed to have won the game by rallying for four runs in the bottom of the eighth, turning a 3-1 deficit into a 5-3 lead. Cowan led the inning off with his first homer in two seasons as a professional. Then Sheehan Planas-Arteaga’s RBI single tied it, Kyle Petty’s suicide-squeeze bunt that he beat out for a hit gave the Sox the lead, and Corey Simpson’s sacrifice fly gave Everett a two-run cushion.
But in the top of the ninth the Dust Devils put the first two batters on base on a walk and a hit batter, with those runners moving up a base on a wild pitch. One run scored on a Dilone’s groundout, and when Sox catcher Luke Guarnaccia couldn’t block strike three to Robert Perkins the second run scampered home to make it 5-5.
Offensively challenged
Everett has struggled offensively for much of the season, but the Sox’s current opponents have had an even harder time of it. Going into Monday’s game Tri-City was dead last in the Northwest League in batting average (.230), slugging percentage (.314) and on-base percentage (.309), and thus had scored the fewest runs in the league (164 in 44 games). Everett had scored just five more runs and had a batting average just one point higher at .231, but the Sox had a better on-base percentage (.318) and a substantially better slugging percentage (.346).
Short hops
Sox outfielder Austin Cousino is enjoying his home park. Going into Monday Cousino was batting .341 with six of his seven doubles and all five of his homers at Everett Memorial Stadium. He was batting .206 with just one extra-base hit on the road. … Everett outfielder Sheehan Planas-Arteaga is mired in a horrible slump. Going into Monday Planas-Arteaga hadn’t had a hit since July 11, a span of more than two weeks, and was hitless in his last 21 at-bats.
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