IronPigs fall in 11 after tying the game in the ninth

FROM THE MORNING CALL

Brian Mazone was perfect through five innings Thursday afternoon.

The left-hander certainly didn't deserve a loss after a masterful eight-inning outing against Durham Thursday afternoon

John Mayberry Jr. saved the veteran what would've been his league-leading 12th loss when his ninth-inning solo homer sent the matinee into extra innings.


But as has been the case the last few nights, in the end nothing could prevent the Bulls from beating the IronPigs.

Ex-IronPig J.J. Furmaniak beat his former team for the second time with a go-ahead RBI double in the 11th inning, lifting Durham to a 2-1 win before a capacity crowd of 10,000 at Coca-Cola Park.

Furmaniak, hitting after Desmond Jennings just beat the relay on what would've been an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play, smoked a pitch from Brian Gordon (1-2) to the wall in right center. Jennings was running all the way, and when the ball caromed past Mayberry to center fielder Chris Duffy, the Bulls runner easily got to the plate before the relay, snapping the 1-1 deadlock.

Furmaniak now has five hits in 40 at-bats with runners in scoring position, including two in 20 at-bats with two outs. Three of them, including both of his two-out hits, have come against the IronPigs, giving Durham (65-40) two wins against his former team.

"It's just totally coincidental," said Furmaniak, who is hitting .273 in 43 games for the Bulls. "If you look at my overall numbers with guys in scoring position, they're not that good. It's just happened that the two times I've gotten key hits have been against Lehigh."

Mayberry took Mazone off the hook with one out in the ninth when he drove an 0-1 pitch from another ex-IronPig, R.J. Swindle, into the bullpens in left for his 12th homer of the season. It was the second blown save of the series for Swindle and only the fifth of the season for Durham.

Mazone was brilliant, retiring the first 15 batters he faced on just 52 pitches and limiting the league's top hitting lineup to three singles while walking nobody in eight innings.

"I've never really thought about it," Mazone said. "My goal is just to go as deep as I can and when I leave a game, leave it with a chance to win."

Angel Chavez broke up Mazone's perfect-game bid by slapping a 1-2 pitch into right center leading off the sixth. And as they did the previous night, when they scored the go-ahead and winning runs without hitting the ball out of the infield, the Bulls pushed their first run across in the same fashion.

Joe Lobaton and Fernando Perez both beat out perfect bunts up the third base line for singles, loading the bases with nobody out. Jennings followed with a bouncer that sent shortstop Brian Bocock into the hole, where his only play was at third for a force on Lobaton as Chavez scored.

"That's absolutely frustrating," said Mazone, who threw 66 of his 96 pitches for strikes. "You're always one broken bat, one mistake, from trouble. But that's baseball."

"Teams that have a real good winning record, you get a lot of things go your way," Furmaniak said.

Both runners moved up on Furmaniak's bouncer to third, but Mazone got out without further damage by striking out Elliot Johnson on a 3-2 change-up.

The IronPigs got a break when Tampa Bay, Durham's parent club, limited Jeremy Hellickson, one of baseball's best pitching prospects, to three innings for unknown reasons. But the IronPigs still managed just six hits — including two each by Ozzie Chavez and Brian Bocock — and struck out 16 times. That increases their strikeout total over the first seven games of the homestand to 76, including 65 in the last five games.

"We don't have a lot of offense right now," IronPigs manager Dave Huppert said. "We've got to put the ball in play better and we've got to get men in scoring position. Besides the home run today we only had three guys get to second base."

Duffy provided one of the stranger moments in three years at Coca-Cola Park when he misjudged Elliot Johnson's two-out line drive in the ninth. The ball went right over his glove and into his shirt, and third base umpire Jason Bradley awarded Johnson second base (he was also given a double) under the rule covering lodged balls.

"That has to be the most freakiest thing I've ever been involved in," Duffy said. "He knuckled the hell out of it … I felt my shirt and it was like, 'Oh,' " Duffy said. "But I don't want him getting a hit; I deserve an error on that."

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