Clippers Have Some Friday Night Fun in Win Over Mariners

Jonathan Timm

Celina, OH: The Muskegon Clippers (8-11) put up eight unanswered runs in their 8-1 victory over the Grand Lake Mariners (6-12) on Friday, June 27th at Montgomery Field. 

The Clippers have now won four straight road games, and are victorious in seven of their last 10, and give the Mariners their fourth straight loss. 

An RBI single from Sam Lapping in the bottom of the first gave the Mariners a 1-0 lead for three innings. 

Joe Chrapliwy went his longest outing of the year and was the player of the game. In his 5.2 innings of work, Chrapliwy allowed the unearned run in the first, while going the remaining 4.2 scoreless. Chrapliwy allowed four hits, no walks and struck out five.

After three scoreless frames, the Clippers were able to make some noise against Mariners starting pitcher Nate Miller in the top of the fourth. With the bases loaded and one out, Cole LeClair hit an RBI-single to make even the score 1-1. Next batter was Casey Joppie who drove in the go-ahead run with an RBI sac-fly to make it 2-1. The final run of the frame would come from an RBI-walk courtesy of Ashten Wong.

The Clippers only needed two arms out of the pen to get them over the finish line with no more harm done. Wednesday’s hero Connor Kelly took to the mound and threw 2.2 scoreless innings with just one hit, one strikeout and a pair of walks. 

Plenty of insurance runs bared fruit in the final two innings. Taylor Head had an RBI-groundout to make it 4-1, and set the stage for Wong to pull a two-RBI double to push the Clips ahead 6-1.

In the ninth, Casey Barnes maneuvered home on a wild pitch to make it 7-1. A crazy 8-6-6-5 double play hit by Casey Joppie allowed enough time for an additional run to score and finalize everything at 8-1.

Blake Gedrich got the final two outs in the bottom of the ninth on the mound.

The Clipper contributions were from all sorts of angles. The eight runs came off of eight hits, nine walks and no errors, but from eight different individuals at the plate. 

Clippers are back in action Saturday at 6:35 at Montgomery Field, with the pregame show at 6:05 on Facebook Live.