The Victoria HarbourCats put up a road-Block in front of the Wenatchee AppleSox on Tuesday night at Royal Athletic Park — and the visitors were stopped dead in their tracks.
A.J. Block, in his second West Coast League appearance of the season for the HarbourCats, went six complete innings in leading the ’Cats to a 6-2 victory, their first of the season at home, after dropping their home opener to the AppleSox on Monday. Victoria is now 4-2 on the season.
Block, who hails from Bellevue, Washington, allowed five hits and two runs, while striking out five Applesox. He has 13 strikeouts in nine innings pitched.
“I was just trying to get ahead of hitters and I did a pretty good job of that, and then just kept getting the change-up over, so it worked out pretty well,” said Block, who recently finished his second season with the Washington State Cougars of the NCAA’s Pac-12.
Block was able to go only three innings in his first start last week because of a high pitch count, but he settled in early Tuesday as the HarbourCats coasted to victory in just two hours, eight minutes.
After allowing a leadoff single and double in the first inning that led to a sacrifice-fly RBI for Wenatchee’s Evan Johnson, Block settled down and retired 12 in a row, much to the delight of the 1,780 fans in attendance.
“A.J. did a good job of limiting the damage in the first inning, and then he settled in and we were able to score some runs after that,” HarbourCats head coach Brian McRae said as his team moved into a tie for first place in the North Division with Walla Walla. “Our bullpen was outstanding tonight and our defence was solid because we took advantage of some of their defensive mistakes.”
The HarbourCats’ offence got going in the second inning thanks to Riley Zayicek. After Kevin Collard reached on an error, Zayicek, a left-fielder from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, sent a Hugh Smith offering over the left-field wall to give the HarbourCats a lead they would never relinquish.
Ethan Lopez was the lone HarbourCat with more than one hit as he went 2-for-4.
Collard, Kekai Rios, and Bryce Bonner had the other RBIs for the HarbourCats.
Taylor Prokopis took over for Block and pitched two scoreless innings before Travis Kuhn pitched a scoreless ninth.
Smith took the loss for the AppleSox, going five innings and giving up four runs, but two of them were unearned.
The two teams wrap up their three-game set tonight at Royal Athletic. After tonight’s game, the two teams will head to Wenatchee to start a three-game series on Thursday night.
EXTRA BASES: Knuckleball pitcher Claire Eccles was in the house Tuesday. The University of B.C. standout left-hander arrived earlier in the day and is expected to be available out of the bullpen for the HarbourCats tonight. She would become the first female to pitch in a West Coast League game.
“[The AppleSox] have a lot of left-handed hitters, so this would be a good team to get her some action so we’ll see how it goes,” McRae said.
