Baseball: Monsters Scoreless Streak at 22 Innings, Shutout Again 3-0

Courtesy Vermont Lake Monsters

BURLINGTON — For the second straight night three Staten Island pitchers combined to blank the Vermont Lake Monsters by identical 3-0 scores with Sunday’s a four-hit Yankee shutout in New York-Penn league action at historic Centennial Field.

The back-to-back shutouts are the first against Vermont since July 31-August 1, 2017 when the Lake Monsters were held without a run in two straight games at Tri-City. The last time Vermont was shutout in consecutive days at Centennial was July 7-8, 2005 when Lowell also shutout the Lake Monsters by identical 3-0 final scores.

Yankee starter Josh Maciejewski (2-1) allowed just two hits with no walks and six strikeouts over the first six innings. Vermont’s best chance to score came in the seventh with Jordan Diaz on third with one out after a leadoff double, but reliever Rodney Hutchison struckout Jose Rivas and got Nick Osborne to flyout to left to keep shutout intact.

Marcus Evey allowed one hit over the final two innings to earn his first save for Staten Island (9-6). Lake Monsters starter Angello Infante (0-3) was charged with one unearned run on five hits with two walks and three strikeouts over four innings.

The Yankees scored a run in top of the first inning with the help of a leadoff walk and a pair of Lake Monsters errors. The game stayed 1-0 until the seventh when another Yankee leadoff walk came around to score on an RBI double from Everson Pereira, who later scored on a pair of wild pitches for 3-0 advantage.

Oswald Peraza and Jose Villa both had two hits for the Yankees, while Jordan Diaz and Nick Osborne each had a double as Vermont (8-8) held to just 10 hits over the final two games of series.

The Lake Monsters head out on a six-game roadtrip to Lowell and Connecticut, beginning with the first of a three-game series at the Spinners 7:05 pm Monday. Vermont returns home to Centennial Field for a three-game series July 7-9.