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| Suppan pitched seven innings, giving up two earned runs on five hits and two walks (Photo: Lee Warren) |
The only scoring came in the fifth inning when Albuquerque first baseman Russell Mitchell took a 1-0 offering from Suppan over the left field wall with centerfielder Jamie Hoffmann on base. After the game, hitting coach Tommy Gregg – who is managing the team while Mike Jirschele is away on personal business – spoke about Suppan’s outing and the pitch Mitchell hit out of the park.
“That pitch was down,” Gregg said. “It was over the plate, but it was down and Mitchell did a good job of just getting the barrel to it and hit a line drive out of the park. But it wasn’t a bad pitch. You’ve got to give Mitchell the credit for putting the barrel on it good. That’s the way the game goes.
“But with our offense, I didn’t think that was going to hurt us any. We haven’t had a problem scoring runs, so that was a little surprising tonight that we couldn’t get anything going.”
Ely kept the Storm Chasers off balance at the plate all night, inducing 14 ground balls outs – something for which Ely isn’t typically known.
“We hit a lot of ground balls,” Gregg said. “Ely just kind of moved it around on us, changed speeds, he had good command of his pitches and stayed away from the right handed hitters. We just couldn’t get anything going. And then when we did get on base, we couldn’t get that big hit.”
The only inning in which the Storm Chasers had a true threat was the bottom of the third, when Manny Pina singled with one out and Jarrod Dyson singled with two down to push an Omaha runner into scoring position for the only time during the game. However, second baseman and red-hot hitting Johnny Giavotella grounded slowly to third, putting an end to the rally.
Omaha had six hits – all of them were singles. Albuquerque had just five hits, but the home run was all they needed. Merkin Valdez and Jon Link came on in relief for the Isotopes and closed the door from there. Link picked up his eighth save of the season.
The loss snapped a mini four-game winning streak for the Storm Chasers and also snapped a franchise-worst 10-game slide for the Isotopes. The Chasers, even while winning 3-of-4 in the series, lost ground to the Memphis Redbirds in the PCL American North by virtue of the Redbirds’ sweep of the Oklahoma City RedHawks over the weekend. The Chasers lead the division by just one-half game.
Omaha will head south Monday for a seven-game road trip leading into the All-Star Break, first visiting the New Orleans Zephyrs for three games and then facing off with the RedHawks for four contests in Oklahoma City.
