NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks infielder Blake Dale celebrates his two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth, a game-winning blast in a 11-8 victory Wednesday at Athletic Park over the Weyburn Beavers.
Medicine Hat News
Deficits be damned, the Medicine Hat Mavericks are finding ways to win.
The Mavs trailed the Weyburn Beavers 8-4 entering the bottom of the sixth before they rattled off seven unanswered runs for the 11-8 win Wednesday night at Athletic Park. It’s the second straight win for the Mavs over Weyburn after taking down the East division’s bottom team 19-6 Tuesday.
Head coach Jonathon Thornhill says they looked at the 5-0 deficit in the third inning and he knew they could still had a chance to come out on top.
“It came down to guys like (Garrick) Levsque coming in and giving us an inning, even though he gave up two but still managed to get out of that with just two, (Ryan) Harney coming and giving us two, (Zack) Hlinksy coming in and giving us one, and only giving up one,” Thornhill said. “Then Luke shutting the door at the end. So Danny (Retzlaff) may not have had the performance he wanted. He did enough to give us those innings there and the bullpen did a great job of shutting the door and our offenxe did a good job of jumping on them when they needed to.”
Danny Retzlaff started the game, working into the four innings before he was lifted in the fourth with six runs against on nine hits and a walk, striking out two. Weyburn opened the scoring with a pair in the second, adding three more in the top of the third.
Right fielder Aaron Vulcano made a diving catch in the second inning and followed it up with an RBI triple off the left field wall in the bottom of the third to make it a 5-1 game. He then scored on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Tyler Vanneste to make it a three-run game.
Weyburn plated a run in the fourth and two more in the top of the sixth to make it a 8-4 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth. Before then, the Mavs added a run in the fourth with an RBI single from catcher Nate King and a solo home run from second baseman Carter Roth in the fifth.
Zack Hlinksy took the ball in the fourth and worked the fifth, allowing a hit and a walk with a strikeout. Garrick Levesque pitched the sixth, allowing a pair on three hits, a walk and a strikeout. Medicine Hat had some luck in the top of the sixth inning when a Beavers’ single down the first base line was originally called fair, allowing a run to score, before being called back after the Mavs asked for it to be discussed between the umpires. That run pulled back kept it an 8-4 game.
The Mavs clawed back in the bottom of the sixth with a three-run home run off the bat of centre fielder Jeremy Freeman Jr. The Chicago, Ill. product knocked his first WCBL home run in Tuesday’s win, with the belt Wednesday a nice reward.
“It feels good, I finally got two of them over the gate so I’m pretty confident in the box,” Freeman Jr. said.
Ryan Harney took the bump for the Mavs in the seventh and worked two clean innings, allowing just a hit to keep it an 8-7 Weyburn lead.
“The goal was just to come in, throw strikes, get weak contact and  just try to get the boys back in the dugout as fast as possible to let them swing the bats again,” Harney said. “That was the case and the bats ended up getting hot at the end of the game, we rally and come back late.”
With one swing of the bat, the Mavs grabbed the lead in the top bottom of the eighth. With a runner on first, designated hitter Blake Dale drove the second pitch he saw over the outfield wall for a two-run home run and the 9-8 lead. The blast was Dale’s first home run of the season, a welcomed knock for the second-year Mavs’ infielder with family in the stands.
“Definitely one of the biggest at bats that I’ve had up here, but in the moment I was just trying to calm myself, do my job for my guys, stick to my approach, gap to gap, just put the barrel on the ball and get the guy over so we can knock him in,” Dale said. “It turns out I ran into a ball and it felt pretty special.”
They added two more runs in the inning with an infield hit off the bat of Roth that led to an error and an RBI single from shortstop Johnny Vulcano for the 11-8 lead.
Luke Barrientos took the ball in the ninth and he worked around two walks, recording a strikeout for the final out to preserve the Mavs’ 23rd win of the season.
Both teams had 14 hits on the night, Weyburn stranded 10 runners to the Mavs’ 7.
The Mavs (23-12) host the Moose Jaw Miller Express on Thursday in a make-up game for a rain out on June 21. That game gets underway at 7:05 p.m.
