News

The Winter Garden Squeeze won their six straight game after defeating the DeLand Suns 11-3 by mercy-rule in the eighth inning Monday night at Conrad Park

 

“This teams got a lot of momentum going,” said Jaob Iverson (Emory & Henry) “Hopefully we can keep this going, maybe get to ten. I don’t know but we are going to see how far we can take it before the all-star break.”

 

Iverson was handed the ball to make his eighth appearance, but just his second start of the year. Iverson couldn’t have given the Squeeze much more than what he gave them, tossing four scoreless innings of two-hit baseball. Iverson only threw 44 pitches in the contest.

 

“When I come out of the pen I just try to go for as many strikeouts as I can,” said Iverson. “This time it was trying to see how far I can go into a game and see how efficient I can be. That’s what I tried to do today and get ahead of hitters and make them hit the ball and get themselves out.”

 

Iverson didn’t record a single strikeout in the 12 outs he recorded. He instead got ten ground ball outs. Four of the ten outs came off two double plays and two different outs were back-to-back diving plays from Todd Clay (UAB) and Ben Maskin (Erskine).

 

“They played really well,” said Iverson. “I had some phenomenal plays behind me and myself catching the ball [from Maksin] that helped a little bit too, but they had my back today. I can trust them a lot.”

 

Winter Garden’s first run of the contest came in the second inning. Zack Stokes (West Florida) reached by an infield single and advanced to second on a throwing error from DeLand. Cole Steinmetz (Valdosta State) laid down what was an attempted sacrifice bunt that turned into a glorious bunt for a hit. Dom Bello (Anderson) brought in Stokes from third with an RBI groundout.

 

In his second game with the squad, John Smith III (South Alabama) made his mark on the team blasting a three-run shot over the left field wall to put the Squeeze up four in the third. Smith finished the night 2-4 also tabbing a walk.

 

Things got tight in the home-half of the fifth inning as DeLand turned the four-run Winter Garden lead to just one. AFter scoring the three runs, the Suns still had bases loaded with two-outs. Kaiden Perez (Saint Leo) entered the ball game and stranded the bases loaded with a fly-out. 

 

Winter Garden turned any momentum DeLand had right around and scored seven unanswered runs across the next three frames to take the ball game in eight innings. The Squeeze produced five hits and six walks along with a hit-by-pitch, in the three innings.

 

Perez finished the ball game on the mound for the Squeeze in what was a phenomenal outing out of the pen. The southpaw got the win with three and a third innings pitched, striking out four allowing just two hits. 

It’ll be a quick turn around for the Squeeze as they play their next game 13 hours after the conclusion of the contest in DeLand. Winter Garden will travel to Sanford to take on the River Rats at Sanford Memorial Tuesday morning. First pitch is set for 11am EST.

 

Riley Kelton (Auburn University)