Courtesy Vermont Lake Monsters
STATEN ISLAND, NY — Adam Reuss and two relievers combined on a four-hit shutout, while Jonah Bride and Devin Foyle each collected three RBI as the Vermont Lake Monsters won its final road game of the season with a 9-0 victory over the Staten Island Yankees in New York-Penn League action Friday night at Richmond County Bank Ballpark.
Reuss tossed six scoreless innings, allowing all four Yankee hits with two walks and two strikeouts. Vermont turned three double plays over the first five innings, including a pair of inning-endings with two runners aboard. Reuss (5-2) allowed just one earned run over 12 innings over his final two starts to finish season with a 3.88 ERA overall.
Oscar Tovar had three strikeouts over his two innings and Jaimito Lebron two strikeouts in a 1-2-3 ninth as the pair of relievers combined to retire all nine Yankees faced to clinch the Lake Monsters seventh shutout victory of the season.
Vermont scored two runs in the top of the second after Aaron Arruda and Nick Osborne opened inning with back-to-back singles. After a strikeout, Jose Rivas bounced one back to Yankee starter Luis Gil (0-2), who threw wild to third base trying to get the lead runner allowing Arruda to score. Foyle followed with a sacrifice fly to score Osborne for a 2-0 lead.
A pair of Yankee errors in the third led to another Vermont run as Jeremy Eierman reached on a fielding error to leadoff the inning and later scored from third when catcher Josh Breaux’s throw to second on a Alfonso Rivas stolen base went into centerfield.
Jonah Bride made it 5-0 in the sixth with a two-out, two-run double into the leftfield corner to score Jose Rivas and Kevin Merrell. It was Bride’s team-leading 16th double, including 12 in the month of August, and the three-RBI gave him 21 for the month.
Two hit batters and a fielding error loaded the bases for Vermont in the seventh before Devin Foyle (who earlier had snapped an 0-for-28 slump with a double) lined a two-run single to leftfield for a 7-0 lead. Merrell singled to reload the bases and Eierman walked to force home another run before a Bride sac fly scored Foyle with the Lake Monsters ninth run of the night.
Foyle, Arruda and Merrell all had two of the Lake Monsters 10 hits in the contest, while Arruda and Jose Rivas both scored a pair of runs. Winners in eight of its last 10 games, Vermont (37-36) remains two games behind the Auburn Doubledays (39-34), who lead the wild card by a half-game over Brooklyn (38-34) and 1 1/2 over Aberdeen (37-35)/Staten Island (36-34).
The Lake Monsters returns home to Centennial Field for the final three games of the regular season against the Stedler Division champion Tri-City ValleyCats. The series begins at 6:05 pm on Saturday and the first 1,000 fans will receive a free Ted Williams Commemorative Cap.