Potomac’s rally comes up short in the 9th

Marvin Lowrance stepped into the left-handed batters’ box in the ninth inning with his team trailing by a run, needing to reach base and score to ensure at least extra innings.
The burly 6-foot, 215-pound Potomac outfielder battled the newest Lynchburg Hillcat, Moises Robles, for six pitches before Lowrance smashed a leadoff double, invigorating what was left of an announced crowd of 1,851 at G. Pfitzner Stadium Thursday night.
Dee Brown, who replaced Lowrance as a pinch runner, reached third with no outs in the frame with Leonard Davis’ single. But the Nationals followed that positive start to the inning with two strikeouts and a ground out, frustrating Potomac manager Randy Knorr with a 10-9 loss.
It was particularly maddening for Knorr after watching his P-Nats storm back from five-run and three-run deficits.
“We kept chipping away but we didn’t do it when we were supposed to,” Knorr said of the ninth and eighth innings, sending runners to third with less than two out in both turns on offense. “You’ve got to have better at-bats than that. We just didn’t have quality at-bats on any of them.”
A night after Lynchburg ended Potomac’s 14-game dominance of the Hillcats, the Nationals’ pitching staff did the team no favors in attempting to start a new streak to finish the four-game series.
Potomac fell behind 8-3 by the end of the fourth but just would not go away against Hillcat pitching.
“They battled the whole time to get back in the game,” Knorr said. “They didn’t lay down, they didn’t die. They could have given up early in the game but they didn’t.”
Starter Terrence Engles (0-5) and reliever Clint Everts combined to walk six Lynchburg hitters in the game, providing the Hillcats with plenty of runners to go with 16 hits on the night as Potomac fell to the Carolina League cellar-dwellers. Along with Lynchburg’s 13-5 win Wednesday night, it was the first time the Hillcats scored double-figures in consecutive games this year.
It also put the team’s offense in a hole that was too deep to completely emerge from.
Potomac has shown signs of the anticipated vaunted offense with a 12-4 win in the series opener Monday and a 13-5 victory the next night, games that each featured three home runs by the home team. The Nationals scored five runs two nights ago, but that total wasn’t nearly sufficient as the pitching surrendered 13 to end that impressive streak against the Hillcats.
Potomac’s offense Thursday came mostly from two players: designated hitter Matt Rogelstad and catcher Brian Peacock.
Peacock went 3 for 4 with four RBI on three doubles, including a two-run double in the eighth, the last runs Potomac would score in the game.
“He’s been working hard and we’ve been trying to get him to slow things down a little ¾ he tends to swing wild at times,” Knorr said. “Hopefully he can ride this and learn from it. That’s a positive thing, right here and hopefully he can hang onto it.”
Rogelstad, normally the starting second baseman, extended his hitting streak to five games with a 2-for-5 night that included a double and three runs driven in, the third time this year with at least three RBI.
Engles, echoing his last start on May 24 when the right-hander could not escape the third, found himself in trouble in the fourth and exited via a pitching change rather than by recording three outs.
Combined with early fielding blunders and less-than adequate pitching from Engles and reliever Clint Everts ¾ who allowed all three runners he inherited to score in the fourth as well as two of his own ¾ the Hillcats’ 16 hits were too much to overcome.
Like Engles and Everts, lefty Jack Spradlin could not work through an inning unscathed, but limited the damage to just one run over 2.1 innings despite working in-and-out of trouble during that appearance.