MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Bowie Bay Sox left the Granite State on Thursday and they took a morning matinee 7-5 victory over the New Hampshire Fisher Cats with them.
Three first-inning runs set the tone for the visitors, with Bowie collecting doubles on three of their five at-bats, with five of their first six batters reaching base safely.
A pair of consecutive singles in the third gave Carlos Perez enough to work with for a sacrifice fly RBI in the third.
Nash Knight’s third homer of the year brought Bowie’s lead back down to three in the fourth, but a Ryan Bannon RBI double in the fifth brought Bowie’s lead back up to four.
That lead held until the seventh, as Chad Spanberger’s three-run blast highlighted a four-run rally that saw seven men get to the plate.
Only one more string of hits, this time in the ninth, allowed Bowie to escape with the win.
Perez and Andreas Feliz each collected a pair of RBI for Bowie, with Feliz finishing as one of three Bay Sox with more than one hit.
The Fisher Cats also had three batters with a pair of hits in the loss.
On the mound, Jackson McClelland (0-1) got the loss after retiring the side in the eighth and leaving with one out in the ninth. Pedro Araujo (1-2) got the win for his five-out relief appearance while Tyler Erwin got his seventh save after retiring the final two Fisher Cat batters.
Hector Perez lasted five innings in his start for New Hampshire, allowing five runs off nine hits and four walks, striking out two Bowie batters. Bowie starting pitcher Marcus Molina pitched 6 2/3 innings, striking out eight and walking one, with only one of the five runs during his outing earned.
With Bowie leaving, the Fisher Cats now face the Richmond Flying Squirrels in a three-game series at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium.
The first game is set for 6:35 p.m. on Friday, with New Hampshire’s Patrick Murphy (4-5, 3.69 ERA) taking on Richmond’s Brandon Lawson (1-2, 4.04 ERA)
