Champion City takes game one of homestand
By Riley Holsinger
For The Johnstown Mill Rats
Mill Rats’ pitcher Conor Deasy has seen the Champion City Kings lineup multiple times this season.
“[Deasy] has been pretty strong for us in his past two starts,” Johnstown manager Parker Lynn said. “Unfortunately for us this was the third time [Champion City] saw Deasy.”
Wednesday’s start for him didn’t go as smoothly as his others. Champion City (10-6) took advantage of seeing familiar pitchers in familiar places on route to a 23-5 win over Johnstown (5-12). Deasy gave up 10 earned runs off 10 hits through 2 1/3 innings.
“The third time you see a pitcher that is bound to happen,” Lynn said. “That’s nothing against Deasy or the stuff because his stuff was there again tonight.”
Champion City opened up with a two-run homerun from Chase Carney that was off of Deasy. Johnstown was in the ball game for the first two innings after that.
Mill Rats infielder Jeremy Iellimo started off the first inning with a triple and was brought home off a Tyler Dellerman sacrifice fly. Damien Yenzi took advantage of a misthrow to second base and jogged in from third. Pete Capobianco scored off another miscue around the plate and waltzed in from a pass ball to give Johnstown a 3-2 lead.
That was Johnstown’s only lead of the game though.
Champion City added six runs in the third inning to go up 10-3. Johnstown attempted to answer back with a Dellerman home run and then a fielder’s choice hit by DJ Alexander to bring in Sam Mast.
Johnstown would go idle on offense the rest of the game. There were three separate innings that were ended with Mill Rats occupying all of the bases. Lynn continues to preach that the team just needs “the big hit.”
“It’s a broken record from me,” Lynn said. “We’ve got to find that big hit consistently and right now that’s something we’re struggling to do.”
The Kings stepped right back on the gas pedal in the fourth inning and tallied seven runs to give them a 17-5 lead. Six more runs would come across the plate for Champion City in the game that was shortened to seven innings due to the Pioneer League rule books.
The Mill Rats will need a short memory as they take on the Kings tomorrow afternoon at 1 in Sargent’s Stadium.
“We’re going to go back in the locker and tell them to eat their post-game meal, get home safe, have a goodnights rest because we have a quick turnaround for tomorrow,” Lynn said.
