Crushers refuse to give up despite big deficits, rally past Aigles for 12-11 win

AVON — Aggressive yet patient. While that may sound like an impossible mindset for a hitter to have with the game on the line, that was exactly what Lake Erie Crushers center fielder Rodney Tennie was thinking Sunday with a runner on third base and one out in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game. Tennie grounded a ball to the right side of the field, getting just enough on it for Kokko Figueiredo to hustle down the line and slide in safely ahead of the tag to seal a 12-11 Crushers comeback win over the Trois-Rivieres Aigles at Mercy Health Stadium. "I was looking for a fastball," Tennie said. "I didn't care where it was. I just wanted to hit it hard. I wanted to just get the run in. I hadn't had a hit yet, so I wanted to hit the ball hard and make the defense make a play. I wasn't going to get in a two-strike count or anything. I was just being aggressive. "You've just got to have a mindset of being calm but aggressive at the same time. It's a balance. It's kind of tough, but you've just got to breathe, have a positive mindset and get your pitch." The Crushers started the ninth inning down by one run, but the first three batters reached base on singles, two of which didn't leave the infield. The Crushers tied it at 11 when designated hitter Danny Perez grounded out to second base to score Bryant Flete. Then Tennie finished off the comeback with the single. The Crushers erased deficits of five and six runs to get the win. "For morale, that was a big team win, especially getting down, being hit in the mouth a little bit going down five runs," Crushers manager Cam Roth said. "We have a lot of younger guys in there, but kudos to these older guys for just taking them under their wing. They're really helping these guys out a lot just in terms of mental approach and how to play the game. "This game speeds up on you really fast if you're not paying attention. That's a good club over there and they have a lot of good hitters in that lineup, but I think we could do a little bit better job on the pitching end. We can't rely on the offense to push across 11 or 12 all the time." The Aigles started strong, scoring four runs in their first at-bat. Left fielder Louis-Phillippe Pelletier and third baseman Joe Campagna led off the game with a single and double, and Pelletier scored when Lake Erie catcher Ermindo Escobar committed a throwing error. Juan Kelly then drove in Campagna with a sacrifice fly to right field. Ricardo Sanchez delivered the big hit of the inning when he belted a two-run home run over the wall in right field. The Aigles added to their lead when Pelletier doubled in Yareb Martinez in the second inning. After being held scoreless in the third inning, the Aigles scored six runs over the next three innings. "I didn't think Kaleb Schmidt had his best stuff, and he's going to have to learn how to pitch with his B- and C-type stuff and battle adversity a little bit better," Roth said. The first two runners reached base in the top of the fourth on a fielding error and a hit batter. Back-to-back doubles from Pelletier and Campagna increased the Aigles' lead and Raphael Gladu drove in another run with a sacrifice fly to left field. After a one-run fifth inning, the Aigles added two more runs when Gladu hit a two-run home run over the wall in right field to drive in Campagna, who had a leadoff double to left field. Despite the early five-run deficit, the Crushers answered with a game-tying five-run third inning. Jarrod Watkins started the inning by working a walk and designated hitter Perez singled before Tennie moved the runners up one base with a sacrifice bunt down the first-base line. After Jackson Valera popped out for the second out of the inning, second baseman Kenan Irizarry drew a walk to load the bases. Watkins and Perez scored on wild pitches from David Gauthier. Following a single from Jack Harris, Escobar drove in Irizarry with a ground-rule double down the right-field line. Harris and Escobar later scored on a Sanchez error when he lost a pop up in the sun. The Crushers trailed 11-5 after five, but they mounted another rally, scoring five times in the bottom of the sixth. Figueiredo led off the sixth inning by legging out an infield single and Watkins drew a walk. After the Aigles retired the next two batters, Valera and Irizarry drew back-to-back walks, the second of which drove in a run. Harris then blasted a grand slam to left-center field off reliever Mark Tindall to make it a one-run game. "It felt pretty good," Harris said. "I faced that guy earlier in the weekend, and I was kind of struggling, swinging at everything. I knew he was coming in to throw me breaking balls, so I had a game plan, stuck to it and got a hold of a good pitch." Harris also made a diving catch in right field for the second out of the seventh inning, robbing Trois-Rivieres designated hitter Elliott Curtis of an extra-base hit. "The guy's a physical player," Roth said. "He's a big guy. You see him with his shirt off and he looks like a damn refrigerator, but he moves well, has good instincts. He's just a hard-nosed type of player, but his baseball IQ is great. Right field is a really hard place to play in this park, but he's done a hell of a job. When you're locked in and things are going right, that's just what great players do that good players don't do. Jack's a great player." "That just demonstrates the character we already have, and we're already starting to demonstrate on the team," Harris said. "Nobody got too down, got too low. Our pitchers kept us in the game, and we took advantage when we could at the plate. I think it was just an all-around good win, and shows what we can do in the future." "We battled," Tennies said. "We knew it was going to be a long game because we're not going to quit. We knew we had a chance to come back, especially when we put up five in the third. I knew we had a chance, even going into the seventh, eighth, ninth, and we got runners in scoring position, I knew we had a good chance of winning." Contact Matt Florjancic at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.