The Fort McMurray Giants season may be ending earlier than they had hoped but that didn’t stop them from putting on a show in front of their hometown crowd one final time.
The Giants (18-26) swept a two game set against division rivals the Edmonton Prospects (22-20) with a 5-4 walk-off win Monday night that they followed up with a 6-3 win on Tuesday.
“It was a great team effort and it was nice to beat those guys over there, they’ve been taking it to us for most of the season and to take two from them is great,” said Giants Manager Pat Riley.
The Giants were led by the offensive power of Richard Ortiz who belted three homeruns over the left field wall in the two games. No homerun was bigger than his one in the bottom of the 9th inning Monday night with the Giants trailing 4-3 and Tyler Friis standing on first base. The Puerto Rican took the 1-2 offering deep to left field and sent Shell Place into a frenzy as the Giants picked up their second walk-off win at home in a week.
Ortiz HR
“I think it’s safe to say he got a hold of those two balls,” said Riley with a laugh of Ortiz’s two homeruns Monday night. “It was good to see cause he’s been playing really well of late.”
The Giants took a 3-0 lead after the first inning Monday with Ortiz hitting his first two run homerun of the ball game. However, the Prospects slowly chipped away at the Giants lead scoring two runs in the fourth before adding singles in the sixth and seventh to jump out in front 4-3.
Giants starter Trevor Bauer was relived by Kyle Gamez after the fourth run came in to score. Bauer pitched 6.1 innings allowing four runs on 12 hits while striking out six batters. Gamez pitched the rest of the way to record the win.
“Another great pitching performance, defence was good, we got timely hitting which was great to see so all around it was a good win,” said Riley.
The Giants were able to follow up Monday’s big win with another strong team effort on Tuesday. Pitcher Alex Nolan was outstanding on the mound, pitching five scoreless innings before the Prospects were finally able to get two in the sixth. Nolan picked up his first win of the season going seven innings and allowing just five hits while striking out four. Nick Cardinal recorded the save pitching the final two innings.
The Giants opened the scoring in the 2nd inning off an error by the Prospects pitcher Finnigan Duffield that allowed Josh Iannetti to come in and score from third off a ball hit by Jordan Stickler. The Giants added to their lead in the fourth when Ortiz led off the inning with his fourth homerun of the season taking Duffield deep to left.
The Giants would add two more runs in the fifth after a throwing error by Duffield allowed Stickler to score before Evan Willow hit a sacrifice fly to score Max Hewitt.
After the Prospects cut the lead to 4-2, the Giants got some insurance in the 8th inning. Travis Turner ripped a ball down the left field line for a double that scored Ortiz from second and advanced Iannetti to third. Corey Conklin then hit a sacrifice fly to cash in Iannetti.
The Prospects would add one in the ninth but that was as close as they would get as the Giants sent home the 1,270 fans in attendance happy.
Despite the two wins, the Giants will not make the playoffs for a second straight season. The Giants have four games remaining as they are able to play the roll of spoiler for teams fighting for homefield advantage. The Giants head out on the road to take on Brooks Thursday, Okotoks Friday, Lethbridge Saturday and then back to Okotoks on Sunday.
“We play close games, we don’t score a lot of runs, we pitch the ball well, it’s low scoring and it comes down to the late innings and we haven’t been getting that big hit,” said Riley when reflecting on the season. “Pitching wise we’ve done our job for the most part but that timely hitting has been coming up but it has been inconsistent and if we could go back in time and change that our record would be a lot different.”
The Giants finished 11-13 at home this season and have set a franchise record for wins with 18 with a chance to improve on that this week.
