Albert Lea team’s offense goes off against carroll by double digits

 

Earlier in the week, the Albert Lea Lakers saw their impressive winning streak end at 13 games. Dropping their last two games, the Lakers hosted the Carroll Merchants Thursday night looking to get back to their winning ways.

After hopping out to an early lead, the Lakers never looked back on their way to grabbing their league-leading 19th victory of the season, 13-2.

Albert Lea struck early in the first inning, scoring a run on its second at-bat of the game. Liam Spence led off with a single and after an overthrow by the catcher, he advanced all the way to third base. Jack McCarthy then hit Spence in with a sacrifice fly to right field.

After a scoreless second inning, the Merchants tied the game at one. However, the Lakers used a big third inning to take a firm grasp of the game. CJ Neumann led off the inning by getting hit by a pitch, Spence hit a single and McCarthy picked up his second RBI of the night with a single.

Following back-to-back walks from Josh Dudden and Keanu Van Kuren, the Lakers had an opportunity to do some damage with the bases loaded. A sacrifice fly from Thomas Kruase brought in a third run and was followed by a two-run RBI double from Derek Burns that hit the fence in left field.

Already up 6-1, the Lakers weren’t finished in the inning just yet. Joey Ponder hit in a run for good measure before a strikeout ended the inning.

The Lakers put up a stellar inning of defense in the top half of the fourth, shutting down the first three batters that came to the plate. They would also add another run to their total in the bottom of the inning, when McCarthy was hit in on a single from Van Kuren.

Albert Lea would bat through the lineup for the second time of the game in the sixth inning. Walks from Spence and Krause and a single from Josh Dudden loaded the bases, followed by Burns hitting in his third and fourth runs of the game with a single. Mitchell Keeran stepped up next and hit his fourth home run of the season to push across another three runs to bring the score to 13-1 at the end of the sixth.

Carroll would put one run on the board in the seventh, but it wasn’t enough to start any sort of a rally, as the game ended after the seventh inning due to impending severe weather.

Reid Feeley pitched for the Lakers to start the game. He pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing one run on five hits, while striking out 11 batters. Cole Peters made a relief appearance to finish out the sixth inning, allowing zero runs on zero hits and striking out one. Jesse Bloom started the seventh inning for the Lakers. Bloom pitched for one inning, allowing one runs on two hits, striking out one.

Albert Lea scored 13 runs on 13 hits and recorded zero errors. Carroll scored two runs on seven hits and recorded one error.

The Lakers climb to 19-4 on the season and will travel to Storm Lake on Friday night to take on the Whitecaps.