Gastonia steals 4-3 win over Lancaster on daring baserunning
Alexis Prato never stopped running, and Lancaster never found the out that mattered. Gastonia turned a seventh-inning sequence of ground balls, open bases and split-second decisions into a 4-3 win over the Stormers at Penn Medicine Park.
The decisive rally started with Prato’s leadoff single in the seventh. David Smith cut the ball off behind second base, but the throw could not beat the developing play, and Prato stayed in motion. Bryson Brigman then chopped a ball on the left side, forcing third baseman Michael Snyder to charge while shortstop Jalen Battles slid over to cover second. That left third base open, and Prato kept going to third without a throw. Eddie Leon followed with another ground ball off A.J. Alexy, and that third straight ball on the ground brought home the tiebreaking run.
Lancaster had built enough of a lead to win with cleaner late innings. Troy Schreffler gave the Stormers their first punch in the third, hammering a two-run homer to right off Ashton Goudeau for a 2-1 advantage. Chris Proctor tied it in the fourth with a two-out RBI single, and Schreffler helped push the Stormers back in front in the fifth when he scored from second on David Smith’s single to left-center. Gastonia answered in the sixth with an unearned run off starter Kyle Lazer to square it again before the seventh-inning chaos tilted the game.
Lancaster still had a chance to pull it back. The Stormers put runners at the corners with one out in the bottom of the seventh, but Prato helped erase that threat with a slick foul-ball catch off Corey Rosier’s bat, and Nate Scantlin turned away Nathan Martorella on a warning-track fly in right-center. McKinley Moore finished it for Gastonia for his sixth save, while Lancaster was left with its seventh loss in eight games and a three-game gap behind Hagerstown in the North race.
Lancaster was in the middle of a six-game homestand against Gastonia from June 23 through June 28, and the Ghost Peppers were rolling hard, extending their winning streak to 10 straight by the next day after already stringing together 15 in a row from May 16 to June 2.