EVERETT _ On a beautiful summer afternoon, the Everett AquaSox played a very un-beautiful baseball game on Sunday.
Particularly with their pitching, the Sox were anything but sparkling. Five Everett pitchers yielded 17 hits and six walks while hitting two batters, and the result was an 11-4 loss to the visiting Hillsboro Hops at Everett Memorial Stadium. It was Everett’s third straight defeat, a season-high skid.
Asked afterward if there were any highlights worth mentioning, Sox manager Rob Mummau said simply, “Not really.”
Hillsboro had early leads of 2-0 and 3-2, though Everett rallied both times and led 4-3 after four innings. But the game got away in the late innings with the Hops scoring twice in the fifth, once in the sixth and five times in the seventh.
“They scored more runs than us,” Mummau said. “We can’t make excuses. We just have to come back out (tonight).”
By the ninth inning, and having already used four pitchers, the Sox sent first baseman Yordi Calderon to the mound. He retired the first two batters, one with a strikeout, gave up as single and double to put runners at second and third, and then got the third out on an infield bouncer.
“Yordi did a great job of coming in there and pitching the ninth inning,” Mummau said. “We needed him. … That’s not something he’s done before.”
Sox starting pitcher Jose Santiago teetered in the first two innings, allowing seven of the first 11 batters to reach base. He then seemed to find a rhythm by retiring nine of the next 11, and one of those base runners reached on an infield error. But when the next two Hillsboro players hit safely, Santiago’s outing came to an end.
Everett relief pitchers Joselito Cano, Spencer Hermann and Dylan Silvan all struggled, and the Hillsboro seventh was particularly difficult. The Hops batted around, combining three hits, a walk, a hit batter, a passed ball, two wild pitches and an Everett error for their five runs.
One thing Sox pitchers did accomplish was ending the six-game hitting streak of Hillsboro’s Dane McFarland. He went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.
The Sox totaled six hits with leadoff hitter Braden Bishop getting two. Cleanup hitter Corey Simpson had Everett’s longest hit, a towering solo home run to left center field in the third inning.
“It was a first-pitch fastball up and he hit it hard,” Mummau said.
The game started with two umpires, but the last seven innings were played with one. Home plate umpire Jordan Johnson left after one inning with a foot injury, leaving Justin Anderson to move behind the plate and work the rest of the game by himself.
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