May 20, 2019

By Adam Morissette

Baseball Canada

LA GINA/BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic –-- Former National Team player and coach Shawn Bowman (Coquitlam, BC) led his Dominican Summer League Pirates to a 9-7 win this morning to snap the Junior National Team’s four-game winning streak, while the afternoon contest saw the Toronto Blue Jays’ Dominican prospects come away with an 8-3 win.

DSL Pirates 9, JNT 7 (Box Score)

Starting pitcher Keegan Pulford-Thorpe (Newmarket, Ont.) battled control issues over his three-inning outing as the Pirates took a 4-0 lead into the fourth inning and added a run in the fifth to go up by five.

The juniors got on the scoreboard in the top half of the seventh and it was Raphaël Pelletier (Montréal, Que.) who came up with an RBI single to left before Dasan Brown (Oakville, Ont.) scored him when he lifted a sac fly to centre.

Gavin Pringle (Duncan, BC) had taken over for Pulford-Thorpe in the fourth and the Pirates got to him in the seventh scoring four times with two of the runs coming on a two-run homer to left to take a 9-2 lead.

The juniors mounted a comeback in the eighth taking advantage of three walks, a hit batter and singles from TJ Schofield-Sam (Brampton, Ont.) and Owen Diodati (Niagara Falls, ON) to put across four runs and Noah Hull (Toronto, Ont.) drilled a two-out double to left in the ninth that cut the deficit to two runs.

DSL Blue Jays 8, JNT 3 (Box Score)

The effects of a long day at the field and their sixth game in four days caught up with the Junior National Team in the afternoon match-up as the squad committed six errors en route to an 8-3 loss to the DSL Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays scored six runs in the sixth in a frame where the juniors committed six errors while a triple off of relief pitcher Simon Lusignan (Varennes, Que.) plated two runs.

Trailing by one in the fifth, Justin Thorsteinson (Langley, BC) scored Austin Gomm (Mississauga, Ont.) on an RBI groundout before Micah McDowell (Coldbrook, N.S.) scampered home with the go ahead run in the sixth when Owen Diodati reached on an error while Cesar Valero (Calgary, Alta.) doubled in a run to give the juniors a 3-1 lead.

Starting pitcher Carter Morris (Vernon, BC) worked four innings and allowed one run on three hits and four walks while striking out three batters.

UP NEXT

The Junior National Team will be back in action tomorrow with a scheduled contest against the DSL Rays beginning at 11 a.m. E.T.