Crushers finding groove on offense, beat Team Quebec 3-1

AVON — Lake Erie's offense seems to be waking up. The Crushers strung together at least eight hits for the fifth straight game in a 3-1 win against Team Quebec on Tuesday evening at Mercy Health Stadium. They will look to keep things rolling today with Sean Johnson on the mound. "We just have to stick to our approach," said third baseman Brody Wofford, who delivered a go-ahead, two-run single in the seventh with two outs. "Baseball is a hard game and hitting is hard in general. We're going to hit our slumps and we're going to be hot. We just have to ride this hot streak out as long as we can and just keep it rolling." Prior to the five-game stretch, Lake Erie's offense had been held to five hits over 23 innings in three games against Southern Illinois last week, hitting .205 as a team for the season. But everything changed in the series finale against the Miners on Thursday, an 8-1 victory with eight hits. In its three-game road series against Washington over the weekend, Lake Erie tallied 27 hits and scored 16 runs in winning two games. It lost the Friday opener 5-2 despite nine hits. "Sixteen months off makes a big difference to a lot of guys," manager Dan Rohn said. "I said it was going to be 20 to 25 games into it before the hitters catch up. They're starting to do it and make some pretty good strides. Some of the guys are hitting really well, but we still have a couple of guys we have to get started." Lake Erie (12-12) got on the board first when Zack Gray delivered an RBI single on a blooper into right with the bases loaded and one out, but the Crushers were unable to make Quebec pay further. Crushers starter Ryan Feierabend pitched well overall, striking out four with two walks and four hits in five innings. He ran into some trouble in the fourth, walking Jesse Hodges after giving up a single to David Glaude. Ruben Castro made him pay with a ground-rule double to tie the game, but Feierabend worked out of it by inducing a fly out and a strikeout. "He just had one inning that kind of got his pitch count up," Rohn said. "We're bringing him back on short rest next week so we had to guard against that, too. He got 84 pitches in and we said that was enough, got us through five innings and that was fine. (Aaron) Glickstein and (J.T.) Perez were outstanding (in relief)." Quebec (11-13) starter Codie Pavia settled in after surrendering his only run, retiring 13 out of 14 batters starting with the last two outs in the third. The lone exception was a double by No. 9 hitter Johnny Knight. General McArthur broke up a string of nine straight Crushers retired in the seventh with an opposite-field single past second. He was the last batter for Pavia, who finished with seven strikeouts and one walk. But despite the strong outing, Pavia took a tough-luck loss when reliever Nick Horvath allowed the next three batters to reach — a single and a walk set up Wofford's single. "I figured it was going to be a lefty-lefty matchup there and try to get ahead with the fastball," Wofford said. "I didn't like the first one, it was a little low, but then I figured he was going to stay away with the breaking ball so I just tried to shoot something through the six-hole. It worked out." Contact Chris Sweeney at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com. Follow him @CSweeneyCT on Twitter.