Just when you think you’ve seen everything in baseball, Monday night’s International League game at Coca-Cola Park had a 12th-inning skunk delay.
That’s how things went for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs against visiting Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which pushed across a run in the top of the 13th inning for a 5-4 win before 8,595 fans at Coca-Cola Park.
Darnell McDonald opened the 13th for the Yankees with a single off Tyson Brummett. Ramiro Pena sacrificed McDonald to second, and the next batter, Kevin Russo, doubled into the right-center field gap to score McDonald.
Chase Whitley set down the IronPigs in order in the bottom of the 13th for his first save.
Lehigh Valley stranded two runners in the 11th inning and had the potential winning run at second in the 12th but could not score.
The IronPigs fell 1½ games behind division rival Pawtucket for the International League’s wild card playoff spot with 10 games left in the regular season.
Lehigh Valley right fielder Nate Schierholtz threw out Eduardo Nunez at the plate trying to score on a single in the seventh. However, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre tied the game at 4-4 when the next batter, Cole Garner, brought in Ronnie Mustelier with a slow dribbler.
The IronPigs came out smoking with five straight one-out hits to take a 4-0 lead against starter Adam Warren in the first.
Cesar Hernandez and Schierholtz scored on Jason Pridie’s single. Pete Orr’s double scored Pridie from first, and Orr came home on Cody Overbeck’s team-leading 63rd RBI.
However, the IronPigs did little against Warren after that. Warren left the game with the score tied after throwing 115 pitches through 6-2/3 innings.
IronPigs starter Tom Cochran wiggled out of a first-inning jam with a double play after Russo and former Japan Central League Most Valuable Player and batting champion Kosuke Fukudome started the inning with a single and walk. Cochran induced another double play in the second.
Fukudome drew his second walk of the game to load the bases in the third, but Cochran, with his cutter, got a strikeout and ground ball to retire the third and fourth batters in the lineup.
In the fourth inning, first-pitch swinging Austin Romine pulled his second homer of the season off the top of the right field wall, and Melky Mesa delivered his seventh homer of the season into the lawn seating area in center.
Ronnier Mustelier closed the gap to 4-3 with an RBI single in the fifth. Cochran went five innings. He gave up six hits, walked four and struck out five.
Michael Cisco retired the Yankees in order in the sixth, but gave up the seventh-inning run.
Left hander David Purcey hit a batter and walked two but pitched a scoreless eighth thanks to a double play. Justin DeFratus, with a nasty slider, retired six in a row (three by strikeout) in the ninth and 10th and pitched a scoreless 11th thanks to another double play. The infield’s fifth double play came in the 12th with Brummett on the mound.
Fukudome walked four times and singled in five plate appearances. Russo earned three free passes. The Yankees got their leadoff man on in six of the first eight innings. Scranton/W-B also recorded its 100th steal of the season.
IronPigs manager Ryan Sandberg said he has not heard anything new about the status of relief pitcher Michael Schwimer, who claims he is injured with biceps tendinitis and feels he should be placed on the major league disabled list but has been ordered by the Phillies to report to Lehigh Valley.