Traverse City Record-Eagle

Beach Bums

August 17, 2011

Crushers limit Bums in series opener

Gonzalez-Diaz leads Lake Erie in series opener

By DENNIS CHASE dchase@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Eric Gonzalez-Diaz is making up for lost time.

The Lake Erie right-hander, who spent most of the Frontier League season in Spain because of visa issues, limited the Traverse City Beach Bums to one run on eight hits in seven innings Tuesday night as the Crushers opened an important three-game set at Wuerfel Park with a 4-1 win.

With the win, Lake Erie opened a 11⁄2-game lead over Traverse City for the wild card berth in the East Division.

“This was a huge win for us,” Gonzalez-Diaz said. “Even though I haven’t been here for the last four months, I’ve been following the team. I know how crucial this is.”

Lake Erie improved to 42-38 while the Beach Bums dropped to 40-39.

“There’s 17 to go,” Traverse City manager Gregg Langbehn said. “Every game, obviously, is important. We’ve got to bounce back.”

It was a tough night for Beach Bums starter Bryan Banes (9-2), who was seeking his 10th win. The left-hander went five innings, surrendering three runs on eight hits.

Lake Erie came out swinging with four hits in the first inning, but could only produce one run as Traverse City threw out two runners on the basepaths — Jodam Rivera at third and Jason Taylor at home. Rivera doubled in Jereme Milons for that first run.

The Crushers added solo runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. Kyle Boe delivered an RBI single in the fourth, Brian Erie came through with an RBI single in the fifth and Andrew Davis added a fluke RBI single in the sixth when his pop-up fell for an infield hit.

The Beach Bums had a chance to get back in the game in the bottom of the fifth. Trailing 3-0 at the time, Tom Zebroski singled, John Parham walked and Zack Pace put down a bunt that Gonzalez-Diaz fielded but threw wildly to first, allowing a run to score. With runners on second and third and no outs — and with the heart of the Beach Bums order coming up — Gonzalez-Diaz pitched out of trouble and the Beach Bums could not recover.

“Their guy made some great pitches — and we helped him out some, too,” Langbehn said. “We need to swing the bats better than that.”

Gonzalez-Diaz improved to 2-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.50.

“The key was getting ahead of the hitters,” he said. “I was fortunate my off-speed was good today and my fast ball location was outstanding. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the greatest off-speed in the world if you can’t locate your fastball. I had both those two things tonight.”

Erie led the Crushers 13-hit attack with three hits. Pace and Chase Burch had two hits apiece for the Beach Bums.

Ruben Flores earned the save, striking out three of the four batters he faced.

The series resumes tonight with David Nathanson (2-1, 3,94 ERA) pitching for Traverse City and Thomas Campbell (3-0, 2.60 ERA) for Lake Erie.

Text Only