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Lightning Lose a Heartbreaker to Sanford

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 1:20pm

The Leesburg Lightning lost a heartbreaker Tuesday night 4-3 in front of the hometown faithful at Pat Thomas Stadium.

For the third game straight, the Lightning bats fell cold early in the game and through seven innings, they had only scratched out one hit. However, they were still very much in the game due to a phenomenal pitching performance from starter Nic Kovacs.

Kovacs went to the extent of his pitching limit throwing just shy of 100 pitches through 6.2 innings of work. Through the fourth inning he had only allowed four base runners and of those, none went past second base. He overwhelmed the strike zone with a swarm of balls in the zone and only threw just over 20 pitches for balls. Through six innings, Coach Therneau still didn’t have a reliever warming up in the pen based on confidence in his starter.

The River Rats had only scored one run through six innings off of a double by third baseman TJ Gavlik who subsequently scored on a sacrifice fly. But in the seventh inning, the wheels started to come off defensively for Leesburg and the Lightning had two errors that would have gotten them out of the inning and instead went for three Sanford runs. Kovacs was pulled and Kory Brooker and Max Rusch did a great job of shutting down Sanford for the final seven outs, neither allowing a run.

Equally impressive with his pitching was River Rats starter Taylor Smith, who, like Kovacs, threw a lot of his pitches for strikes and only allowed two base runners through seven innings. Smith also went to the end of his pitching limit leaving the game after the seventh, but not before striking out eight Lightning batters.

In the eighth inning though, Leesburg came alive. With the fans cheering and the Lightning players all on their feet, the team managed a handful of base runners and three runs in the eighth inning to make it a one run game. All three runs came off of Sanford reliever Pat Fortunato, who is primarily an infielder for the team.

After Rusch closed the door on the River Rats in the top of the ninth, Leesburg looked for anyway to scrounge one last run to tie the game. Mike Miller, playing in just his second game for Leesburg, led off the bottom of the ninth with a big single to left field. He would advance to second on a wild pitch and the Lightning seemed to be in business. But, Sanford closer Adam Maxon struck out Troy Drummond and Patrick Hicks. Hicks, who played right field for the Lightning on Tuesday, made his debut for Leesburg as a pitcher on Sunday. Hicks had an incredible final at bat, fouling off at least a half dozen pitches and working the count full before Maxon  got him. Tyler Kellmann pinch hit for Chase Durham and hit a hard ground ball to the right side, but the first baseman made a nice scoop and the game was over.

The Lightning look to get their offense back on track tomorrow night at home against Winter Haven at 7:00.

By: Nick Beardi (Medaille College)