The Harrisburg Senators got a short, three-game look at New Hampshire this week, and the series gave them a little bit of everything: missed chances, a breakout night at the plate, and a shutout win to finish it off.
The opener on July 17 was the kind of game that can linger. Harrisburg had plenty of traffic on the bases but couldn’t turn it into enough runs, falling 5-2 to the Fisher Cats.
The Senators went just 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position and stranded 12, including key opportunities in the first and seventh innings. Lyon settled in after a shaky start, retiring the final 11 batters he faced and allowing only three hits over 4.1 innings.
Simpson also gave Harrisburg a lift with 1.2 scoreless, hitless innings. But New Hampshire grabbed two runs in the first, added another in the seventh, and then put the game away with two unearned runs in the eighth.
Harrisburg answered with two runs of its own in the bottom of that inning, helped by catcher interference, before Coleman finished things off with a strikeout and a scoreless ninth.
The next night belonged to Ethan Petry. On July 18, he turned in a monster line, going 4-for-4 with a career-high four hits and five RBIs as the Senators snapped a four-game losing streak with a 7-4 win.
Petry was one triple away from the cycle, and he wasted no time making his presence felt. New Hampshire scored first in the second inning, but Harrisburg answered right away when Petry doubled home a run to tie it.
The Senators then took control in the fourth, when Sam Petersen and Sam Brown opened with back-to-back singles before Petry launched a three-run homer, his sixth long ball in Double-A. The bullpen held firm from there, with Aaron Shortridge and Seth Shuman combining for four scoreless innings.
Harrisburg broke it open in the eighth, stringing together six straight batters reaching base to push the lead to 7-2.
The series ended on a cleaner note for Harrisburg, which got a strong rehab outing from Jake Irvin on July 19 and rode it to a 2-0 shutout. Irvin, back at FNB Field on assignment from the Nationals, worked 4.2 scoreless innings with no walks and five strikeouts.
The only real damage against him was a double by Arjun Nimmala in the fourth. Chance Huff got the final out of the fifth and picked up his fourth win of the season, while Josh Randall handled the rest with four scoreless innings in relief.
Randall struck out six and allowed only two singles in what was his first pro relief appearance. The win gave the Senators their second series victory in a row and their third in four second-half series.
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