Tillman shuts down Bears; Sox win 8-5

EVERETT – This time the Everett AquaSox saw the real Chris Tillman.

In his second start for Everett, Tillman showed off the skills that made him such a prized prospect, leading the AquaSox to an 8-5 victory over the Yakima Bears on Thursday at Everett Memorial Stadium.

Tillman shut down the Bears with six dominating innings, and Everett survived a late Yakima homer barrage to hold on for the victory.

“That was definitely (the real me),” Tillman said. “In my last outing I was throwing three balls in a row to every batter, and after that it’s hard to establish your strike zone. I had to get it back.”

Manelik Pimentel slugged two home runs and Danny Santin and Joe White also homered for Everett (27-30). Pimentel ended up 3-for-4 with five RBI.

Edwin Roman, Brad Miller and Justin Brashear all homered in the eighth inning for Yakima (18-39), which managed to turn a blowout into a contest.

Tillman is considered a promising prospect. However the 18-year-old right-hander, who was the Seattle Mariners’ second-round pick in this year’s draft, struggled mightly in his first start for Everett, emerging with an ugly 16.87 earned run average.

But on Thursday Tillman (1-1) was everything he wasn’t during is first start. Showing good pop on his fastball and sharp break on his curve, Tillman limited Yakima to one hit and three walks in six scoreless innings, striking out 10. He didn’t appear to tire at all, striking out five of the seven batters he faced in his final two innings.

“Today I think I threw less than 10 offspeed pitches,” Tillman said. “It was all fastball today.

“I felt real good,” Tillman added. “Going into my first start I actually felt better, today I was a little more shaky, But that’s the thing with pitching, you never know what’s going to happen.”

Tillman’s 10 strikeouts were a season high for an Everett pitcher – Doug Fister and Tony Butler each had nine earlier in the season.

“I really expected something like that, but he even exceeded my expectations,” Everett manager Dave Myers said. “He threw strikes with his fastball on both sides of the plate, he was aggressive with it, and he had a real good breaking ball tonight.”

Tillman’s efforts were nearly wasted as Yakima rallied in the eighth. Everett led 8-0 and was cruising with two out and nobody on. However, Roman, Miller and Brashear all launched homers off reliever Joe Kantakevich – with a pair of errors squeezed in between – cutting the lead to 8-5 and ending a string of 19 scoreless innings thrown by AquaSox pitchers.

However, Jose Suriel ended the threat in the eighth, and Fister pitched a perfect ninth for his fourth save.

“It turned out we needed all those runs tonight,” Myers said. “We jumped out and got three right off the bat, but we continued to add on. that really turned out to be the difference in the game. In this ballpark a homer is always a possibility.”

Indeed, of the game’s 12 hits, seven were homers.

On a sour note for Everett, center fielder Gavin Dickey was forced the leave the game after the first inning because of a wrist injury. Dickey was hit by a pitch from Yakima starter Eric Butler and although he remained in the game to run, he was removed after the end of the inning and taken to the hospital for X-rays.

With Dickey out and fellow outfielder Kevin Reynolds temporarily promoted to Class AAA Tacoma, third baseman Leury Bonilla was forced to fill in at left field.

Everett took advantage of Yakima starter Eric Butler’s wildness to score three in the bottom of the first. Two walks and a hit batter loaded the bases with nobody out. Pimentel’s single to center plated two runs, and Bryan Sabatella’s sacrifice fly to deep right scored the third as the AquaSox jumped out to a 3-0 lead.

Everett stretched its lead in the third. Bonilla ripped a leadoff single off the center-field wall, then Pimentel blasted a shot over the wall in left, making it 5-0.

The Sox then got solo homers in each of the fifth, sixth and seventh to make it 8-0. In the fifth Santin lofted a homer over the right-field wall, his first homer of the season. An inning later White hit his fifth of the season, and Pimentel slugged his team-leading eighth of the season in the seventh.