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Baseball today, abbreviated version: Wednesday, April 25 »
April 24, 2007
In a rematch of starting pitchers Rochester’s Kevin Slowey once again bettered Pawtucket’s Devern Hansack as the Red Sox fell to the Red Wings 5-2 Tuesday at Frontier Field.
The two rookies faced each other only last week at McCoy Stadium with Slowey (3-0) striking out nine in five innings and Hansack (1-2) allowing three runs on eight hits in five innings as the Red Wings shutout Pawtucket.
In last night’s rematch the PawSox finally scored on the Rochester righty but four runs on 10 hits by the Red Wings off Hansack helped Rochester to the win.
"The story was Slowey," Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson said.
"It was a dominating performance by Slowey," Rochester manager Stan Cliburn added.
"You have to tip your hat. Slowey did a great job," Johnson said. "It was an interesting game."
Slowey (3-0) again had nine strike outs, this time over seven innings, allowing the two runs on three hits. The PawSox whiffed 13 times in the game.
"We made the most of our three hits," Johnson said.
Brandon Moss had a single in the second and Chad Spann singled in the fifth.
Then, in Slowey’s terms, the bottom fell out when he walked Moss in the seventh.
Moss became the first batter in 65 that Slowey has faced in 18 innings to earn a walk from the Red Wings rookie.
"He made some really good pitches," Moss said of his 13-pitch at-bat against Slowey in the seventh inning. "He has really good command. It took him a lot of pitches to walk me and none of them was over the middle of the plate. He was trying to get me to chase something out of the zone. If he wanted to throw a strike there he could have."
George Kottaras followed with a two-run homer to right.
"He hit it a country mile," Slowey said.
"I was overly aggressive in earlier at-bats," Kottaras said. "I went up looking for a pitch I could handle. He has great stuff and will make you pay if you chase stuff. He has a great idea on how to pitch I was lucky to run into one (that he didn‘t concentrate on)."
Kottaras became the first in 66 batters to homer off of Slowey drilling the first pitch he saw over the right-field wall for the only Pawtucket runs.
"Slowey said he made a mistake on Kottaras," Cliburn said. "I told him that wasn’t a mistake pitch. It was a 91 MPH fastball that a good hitter hit out of the park. Your only human."
Three of the Rochester runs came on sacrifice flies. Another on a wild pitch, one of four thrown by Hansack, and the other on a single to center.
"We went out and manufactured runs," Cliburn said. "We stole bases. We were aggressive on the base paths and that allowed us to score on the sacrifice flies."
"When they needed to run and steal a base, they did," Johnson said. "We did a good job of defending but it didn’t work."
Today’s afternoon tilt with the Red Wings will be another classic pitching duel as righty Matt Garza, the minor league player-of-the-year, will take the mound for Rochester against Jon Lester for Pawtucket. It will be the lefties first rehab start for the PawSox. Lester, in three starts for Single-A Greenville allowed three runs on 11 hits over 13 innings with 15 strike outs in three starts for the Drive.
ED GONSER (Special to the Journal)
Posted by Corey Bourassa 
at 10:13 PM to PawSox
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