(CRESTWOOD, IL) – Brent Solich pitched shutout baseball into the eighth Wednesday night as the left-hander led the ThunderBolts to their 20th consecutive win at Standard Bank Stadium., 3-1 over the Oakland County Cruisers.
Solich retired the first ten batters he faced before Tyler Rogers finally singled in the 4th. He was working with the lead almost the entire time as the Bolts started strong offensively.
In the first inning, Gilberto Mejia and Ryan Basham hit back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners with one out. Zach Aakhus hit a fly ball to right field that brought Mejia in to score the game’s first run. In the second inning, J.T. Restko led off with his second triple of the year and came in to score on a Michael Torres groundout to short.
Neither team would score again until the sixth. In that inning, Mike Mooney walked, stole second and advanced to third on Restko’s single. Torres laid down a squeeze bunt that scored Mooney, making it 3-0. The Bolts had another run taken off the board when Nick Kuroczko’s single apparently scored Restko. But Torres was thrown out at second base after wandering too far off the bag and the third out was deemed to have occurred before the run scored.
Windy City didn’t need it, though. The only run for Oakland County came in the eighth, when Joash Brodin singled in Zack Pace, who had reached on an error. That chased Solich from the game after 7.1 innings. Brandon garner came in and loaded the bases but got out of the jam without any further damage.
Solich improved to 7-6 with the win, striking out six and not allowing an earned run. Bernard Robert started for Oakland County and took the loss (4-9). Nick Hall pitched a scoreless ninth for save number 14.
The big series against Oakland County wraps up on Thursday. Richard Barrett (7-2) will take the hill for the ThunderBolts against the Cruisers’ Andres Esquibel (6-6). It will be dollar beer night at the stadium with first pitch scheduled for 7:05. The game can be heard on Sportsjuice.com.
