Bonifacio powers Long Island to 15-7 rout with eight-run eighth

Long Island turned a tight game into a blowout with one crushing eighth inning, scoring eight runs in the frame and rolling past Southern Maryland 15-7 at Fairfield Properties Ballpark. Jorge Bonifacio set the tone before that with a 438-foot three-run homer in the first inning off Greg Minier, then added a 424-foot two-run blast later against Justin Sanchez to finish with seven RBI, three hits and four runs scored.

Southern Maryland briefly answered in the second when Ezequiel Pagan homered to cut the gap to 3-1, but the Ducks kept stacking pressure. Wilmer Difo drove in a pair with a sixth-inning double to make it 7-3, and the Blue Crabs clawed back to 7-5 in the seventh on RBI hits from Brody Fahr and Jackson Loftin. By then, Long Island had already shown how quickly the game could swing once its middle order started finding gaps and barreling mistakes.

The real break came in the eighth, when Long Island sent 14 batters to the plate and did not stop at one or two insurance runs. Difo delivered a run-scoring triple, Alsander Womack followed with an RBI single, Gavin Collins lined a two-run single and Bonifacio came through again with a two-run double. Aaron Takacs added an RBI double, and a hit-by-pitch against Ian Yetsko forced in another run as the inning swallowed the game whole.

J.P. Woodward earned the win in relief after Kevin Cardona opened with three solid innings for Long Island. Carlos Rojas opened the ninth with a home run and Phillip Sikes added an RBI double for Southern Maryland, but the Blue Crabs were long past the point of recovery by then. With the Ducks and Blue Crabs locked into a six-game series in early July, Long Island’s ability to explode early and then bury teams at home looked every bit like the formula of a lineup that can change a game in one inning, especially when Fairfield Properties Ballpark starts feeding that momentum back.