SeaWolves hold off late Curve rally
ALTOONA, Pa. – All six of Altoona's runs and eight of its hits came across the final four innings of the game, but Erie picked up a 10-6 win over the Curve in front of 5,743 fans Wednesday afternoon at Peoples Natural Gas Field. Curve righty Khristian Curtis started the game with three dominant innings, allowing just one hit and striking out five, before running into trouble in the fourth.
Erie earned three walks to start the inning and after Chris Meyers singled home a run, SeaWolves third baseman Izaac Pacheco hit a grand slam to push Erie ahead 5-0. Curtis struck out six in 3 2/3 innings, his 50 strikeouts this season match Greensboro's Seth Hernandez for the most strikeouts by a Pirates minor leaguer this season. Erie added two more runs in the fifth when John Peck hit a two-run homer, which opened a 7-0 lead for the SeaWolves.
The Curve got on the board in the sixth inning when Derek Berg brought Keiner Delgado home when he reached on a fielding error. Altoona picked up three runs in a lengthy seventh inning at the plate. Javier Rivas started the frame with a solo homer off lefty Lael Lockhart and after a double from P.
J. Hilson, a walk from Matt King and a wild pitch, Altoona plated a run on a sacrifice fly from Duce Gourson following an 11-pitch at-bat. Samuel Escudero singled home another run to cap off the inning and make it an 8-4 game.
Catcher Derek Berg added a long solo homer off the videoboard in left-center field in the eighth inning to wrap up the scoring. Berg's third homer of the season marked the 12th game this season that the Curve have hit at least two homers. Titus Dumitru added an RBI double in the ninth to make it a 10-6 game.