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Late innings have not been kind to Cedar Rapids Kernels, who lose to Wisconsin, 6-2
Timber Rattlers break open 2-2 game with 4-run 9th inning
Jeff Johnson
May. 29, 2021 12:55 am
CEDAR RAPIDS – The Cedar Rapids Kernels are an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.
In one way, they have been extremely similar to the big-league team. That’s not a good thing.
Wisconsin scored four runs in the top of the ninth inning to beat the Kernels, 6-2, Friday night at chilly Veterans Memorial Stadium.
Le’Von Ward’s two-out triple with the bases loaded broke a 2-2 tie. The Timber Rattlers scored twice in the eighth to end a scoreless dual, with Cedar Rapids using five walks in the bottom of the inning to knot it.
The Kernels have not been good in the late innings so far this High-A Central League season, being outscored by a 54-16 margin in the seventh, eighth and ninth. Anyone who has watched Major League Baseball this spring has definitely noticed the late innings have not been kind to Minnesota, either.
“We have been in a lot of baseball games,” said Kernels Manager Brian Dinkelman. “Games that have been close. Just a couple of hits away from taking the lead. Just like tonight … Just not being able to come up with the big hit late in games with guys on base is kind of our downfall at the moment. Hitting the ball hard, just not finding holes.
“The bullpen has had a rough go here and there. Hopefully we can fix that up a little bit and give ourselves a chance to win these games.”
Matt Canterino continues to emerge as a top-flight prospect, striking out 10 guys in four innings as Kernels starting pitcher. That tied his career high, set in his previous start against Beloit, that spanning six innings.
The second-round pick of the Twins in 2019 out of Rice University has given up just two earned runs in 19 innings (a 0.95 earned run average) in his first four starts for Cedar Rapids. Wisconsin’s David Hamilton tripled into the right-field corner on Canterino’s first pitch of the game, with the right-hander getting a short flyball and two strikeouts to keep the Timber Rattlers from scoring.
“He was throwing the ball well,” Dinkelman said. “The pitch count was getting up there a little bit, and it was cold weather tonight, so we just took him out.”
Canterino, Tyler Palm, Jordan Gore and Melvi Acosta combined for 20 strikeouts in this game, yet their team somehow lost the game. Gore took the loss, though Acosta was the one who allowed Ward’s big hit.
Former Iowa Hawkeyes pitcher Brady Schanuel (1-0) picked up the pitching victory for Wisconsin. He retired five of the six batters he faced, getting out of a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the bottom of the eighth in a tie game with a strikeout and lucky groundout on an Alex Isola bullet comebacker that deflected off him and to second baseman Hayden Cantrelle, who dove to his left, fielded the deflection and threw to first for the out.
The teams play a doubleheader beginning at 5:05 Saturday afternoon.
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