EVERETT — Mike Dowd didn’t think the ball was going to get out.
Perhaps a little assistance from his teammates made the difference.
Dowd’s high fly ball in the bottom of the sixth inning just cleared the left-field fence to break a deadlock, and the solo home run stood up as the game
winner as the Everett AquaSox defeated the Tri-City Dust Devils 4-3 Thursday night at Everett Memorial Stadium.
With the score tied 3-3, Dowd led off the inning by getting good wood on a pitch from Tri-City reliever Craig Bennigson. The ball was lofted deep to left, but the question was whether Dowd got under it too much.
However, the ball came down just beyond the fence to give Everett a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
And perhaps the ball received a bit of a push.
“I didn’t think it was going out, I thought maybe it was going to get some wall,” Dowd said. “I had a teammate tell me they were all in the bullpen trying to blow it over. That was pretty funny. I got it pretty good, but I didn’t know it was going out.”
It turned out Dowd’s homer was all the Sox needed as reliever Kyle Hunter was lights out over the final four innings to make the one-run lead stand.
Dowd finished the game 3-for-4 — extending his stretch of hits in consecutive at bats to seven before grounding out in the eighth inning — and Mario Yepez also went 3-for-4 for Everett (10-6 second half, 26-28 overall), which turned in a solid effort to bounce back from Wednesday’s 18-7 thrashing by Tri-City in the five-game series opener.
“It was definitely a nice bounce back,” Everett manager Scott Steinmann said. “They still swung the bats well early on, and I’m glad (starter Stephen) Landazuri did a great job calming them down a bit, and Hunter did a great job closing the door for us.”
The Sox maintained a one-game lead over both Eugene and Salem-Keizer in the Northwest League’s West Division standings.
Timothy Smalling doubled twice to lead East Division-leading Tri-City (11-5, 33-21), which had its five-game winning streak snapped.
Everett fell behind 3-1 early in the game as Tri-City went double crazy. The Dust Devils belted five doubles in the first three innings, and six of their eight hits in the game went for two bases.
Although Landazuri was laboring, he managed to limit the damage, holding the Dust Devils to three runs over five innings and twice stranding runners at second and third.
Then Hunter entered the game and Tri-City’s offense came screeching to a halt. The left-hander, who joined the team last week in Yakima, allowed the Dust Devils just two singles over the final four innings, striking out seven. He picked up the win to improve to 2-0.
“Kyle’s real confident with all three pitches (fastball, curve, changeup),” Dowd said. He locates his fastball well, he’s got some arm-side run coming from a lefty. He was attacking the lefties in, they were swinging over the fastball, and he was throwing his curveballs to the back foot of the righties. Everything was working well for him.”
Meanwhile, Everett was chipping away at Tri-City’s 3-1 lead. The Sox pulled back within one in the fourth when Dowd doubled off the right-center wall and later scored on Jarrett Burgess’ fielder’s choice. Everett then tied it in the fifth on Marcus Littlewood’s RBI fielder’s choice, but the Sox were prevented from taking the lead when Littlewood was thown out at home plate trying to score on Ethan Paquette’s double to center.
However, Dowd and Everett’s relievers, both on the mound and in the bullpen, made sure the Sox got that lead the next inning.
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