Bill Hass on Baseball:Hoppers stay alive with 7th straight win

Hoppers stay alive with 7th straight win
from Bill Hass with Bill on Baseball(Greensboro Grasshoppers) at www.gsohoppers.com….

The Hoppers continued to make it a pennant race in the Northern Division Thursday night.

Greensboro won its seventh straight game, and 18th in its last 23, by beating Kannapolis 5-2. First-place Hagerstown, meanwhile, had its home game against Greenville rained out.

The Hoppers (41-26) are now within 2 1/2 games of the Suns and have three games to play in the first half. Hagerstown (43-23) has four games remaining. The Suns will play a doubleheader against the Drive Friday while the Hoppers play a single game at Kannapolis. Greensboro’s elimination number, which is the combination of Hoppers losses and Suns wins, remains at two.

At stake, of course, is an automatic berth in the South Atlantic League playoffs. Savannah has already clinched the first half of the Southern Division. Teams from each division that win the second half will also qualify. If the same team wins both halves in a division, the second qualifying team will be the one with the best overall record.

Matt Milroy pitched shutout ball for six innings Friday, allowing three hits while striking out nine. He earned his sixth win to join teammates Domingo German, Jarlin Garcia and Ryan Newell with that many. C.J. Robinson pitched a scoreless seventh, striking out two.

Sean Donatello shut out the Intimidators in the eighth but gave up a two-out, two-run triple in the ninth. He got the Hoppers out of the inning by retiring the last batter on a groundout to first base. The three pitchers recorded 13 strikeouts.

The offense struck for four runs in the top of the fifth inning. After one scored on an error, Justin Bohn tripled in two more and Felix Munoz doubled in another. Joel Jimenez added an RBI single in the eighth. Jimenez, the backup catcher, had three hits, an RBI and scored a run. Bohn and Cody Keefer finished with two hits apiece.

Munoz now has 46 RBIs and Bohn has 40.

Max Garner will start Friday’s game for Greensboro.