Following his teammates’ lead, Eugene Emeralds reliever Tanner Griggs entered the game and mowed through three Hawks hitters for a 1-2-3 eighth inning Sunday night at PK Park.
The ninth inning was not as kind to Griggs. He gave up four runs and squandered the Emeralds’ lead in their 6-4 loss to Boise.
Both the Emeralds’ Casey Bloomquist and the Hawks’ David Hill made their professional starting debuts Sunday night, and the former had more success than the latter.
Hill surrendered two runs in two innings. Bloomquist, who pitched two innings as well, retired all six batters he faced and struck out half of them.
Though he only through 15 pitches, Bloomquist was scheduled to pitch two innings because he recently finished a college season with Cal Poly, manager Gary Van Tol said.
“He probably could have gone five or six innings really easily,” Van Tol said. “Our philosophy is to protect those guys and give them a taste of what professional baseball is because they have thrown a lot during the college season.”
The Emeralds’ offense did their part in the first inning as well, scoring two runs. After a two-run homer by the Hawks’ Brian Mundell in the fourth inning to tie it, Eugene took the league back with a run in the fifth and added an insurance run in the eighth.
“We were in control of the game right from the get-go even though they tied up the game,” Van Tol said. “We kept the momentum, we kept the pressure on them.”
Cleanup hitter Matt Rose had a particularly productive night, going 4-for-5 with 2 RBI.
“I’m really pleased with his overall approach and what he’s doing for us,” Van Tol said. We need to keep guys like that rolling.”
With a two-run lead, Griggs knew he could risk throwing strikes over the plate in the ninth inning, Van Tol said.
The plan backfired, however, as the first two batters of the inning — Hamlet Marte and Mundell — both singled quickly. From there, two hit batsmen, a wild pitch, another hit batsmen and a two-RBI single by Marcos Derkes ended Griggs’ night with two outs in the inning.
“His stuff is very good and he’s very capable, but when the bases are loaded and there’s not much room to make a mistake, that margin for error gets less and less,” Van Tol said.
Now at 17-21, the Emeralds finish the first half of the season in third place, five games behind the Hillsboro Hops in the Northwest League South. Eugene has now lost 13 of its last 16.
Van Tol said his team has not yet experienced a loss quite like Sunday night’s.
“When you’re rolling like we were halfway through the first half, you win that game,” he said. “We’ve really had a roller coaster ride. We need to simplify things and play more consistently.”
The Emeralds’ have a chance at a clean slate beginning tomorrow, the second of a three-game series against Boise. Eugene’s Oscar De La Cruz will start against the Hawks’ Angel Lezama at 7:05 p.m..
Follow Jack Heffernan on Twitter @JackTHeffernan