Published: July 17, 2008 11:23 am            

LumberKings take 6-1 win over Fort Wayne in Main’s home debut

CLINTON — Jonathan Greene’s 16th home run of the season broke a 1-1 tie in the sixth inning as the Clinton LumberKings came away with a 6-1 victory over Fort Wayne on Wednesday night at Alliant Energy Field.

Michael Main made his home debut, but It was a short lived one as he left after the second inning with a blister on his throwing hand. Main threw 46 pitches and didn’t qualify for the win. Main ended up striking out two Fort Wayne hitters and walked two while giving up only one run.

“He had a blister on his pitching hand and we didn’t want to take any chances” said Manager Mike Micucci.

Fort Wayne’s center fielder, Brad Chalk, doubled to right over the head of Kyle Murphy to lead off the second. Luis Martinez grounded out to short to move Chalk to third. Chalk scored on the single from Luis Durango that landed in front Engel Beltre.

Cristian Santana belted his ninth home run to dead center to tie the game up at one in the bottom half of the frame.

Jorge Quintero replace Main in the top of the third and had one of his best outings of the year going three innings and yielding no runs and struck out one.

“You can’t say enough of what Quintero and Turner did. For them to give us length out of the bullpen each guy and to continue to give us strikes and ground balls they gave us a chance.” said Micucci of his bullpens performance.

Beltre lead off the sixth by lining a single to the opposite field. Beltre swiped his 14th bag of the season to move up to second. Matt Lawson put down a perfect bunt down the third base side as he moved Beltre up 90 feet and got to first with the infield hit.

Mitch Moreland lined out to third baseman Justin Baum for the first out. Then came Greene’s home run to left field to clear the bases and gave the L-Kings the 4-1 lead. Greene is now only six shy of Dick Kenworthy’s club record of 22.

“Both Bama (Brian Dayett) and Hardy (Jason Hart), they’ve done a good job with him making adjustments here and there. They looked at some video from last year where he was successful to get him back to that swing where he was comfortable.”

Ryan Turner came on to replace Quintero in the top of the six. Turner had another scoreless outing as he lowered his ERA to 2.70 by going three solid innings and struck out four hitters. Turner also picked up his fourth win of the season (4-1).

Beltre started off the seventh with his ninth triple of the season down the right field line. Lawson went down swinging for the first out.

The league leader in RBIs, Moreland, collected on another RBI opportunity by getting his fourth triple of the season that scored Beltre. It was Moreland’s 64th RBI of the season.

After Fort Wayne made a pitching change, Greene got his fourth RBI of the night by flying out to right that scored Moreland.

Chris Dennis came on in the ninth and shut down Fort Wayne 1-2-3.

The LumberKings will hook up with Fort Wayne again tonight starting at 7 p.m.

The LumberKings will trot out the Rangers first overall pick (17th overall) Blake Beavan who will make his 15th start of the season. Beavan is 6-5 with an ERA of 2.62 on the season. In Beavan’s last outing he went six shut out innings against West Michigan and has not allowed an earned run in his last two outings.

        

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