The Columbus Clingstones closed the season with a rough 4-1 loss to the Montgomery Biscuits, a game that left the offense stuck in neutral and sent them into the second-half finish in fourth place. The pitching gave them enough of a pulse to hang around, but the bats never really showed up.
Davis Polo took the ball for the final start of the year and turned in a mixed outing: 6.1 innings, eight hits, four runs, three earned, three walks and five strikeouts. The command wasn’t sharp early, and he had trouble locating enough to stay out of damage in the first inning and beyond.
Even so, he still missed bats at a high rate, piling up 18 whiffs with his slider and his quickly developing changeup. After the Biscuits scored twice in the first two innings, Polo settled down and kept them off the board for the next four frames, giving Columbus a chance to climb back into it.
That chance never turned into much. Polo allowed a solo home run in the bottom of the seventh, then recorded a fly out and issued a walk before handing things off to Julio Robaina.
Robaina covered the final 1.2 innings, allowing no hits and no earned runs while striking out two. He inherited a runner who later scored, but the run was unearned.
He also worked a perfect eighth, doing his part to keep the game within reach.
The offense, though, had nothing going. Columbus finished 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded just three runners all night. Their only hit came on a fourth-inning leadoff single by John Gil, who was thrown out trying to steal second right after reaching base.
The Clingstones did scratch across their lone run in the ninth. Dalton McIntyre opened the inning with a walk, moved to second on defensive indifference, advanced to third on a passed ball and scored when the shortstop made an error. It was too little, too late in a game that summed up the night for Columbus: solid enough pitching, but no real support from the lineup.
It also wrapped up a strong season for many of the Braves prospects on the roster. The next move to watch is who gets bumped up to Gwinnett this week for more work, while the players who stay put can at least look back on a year that went well overall.
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