Willmar starter Will Lydon tosses eight shutout innings, Stingers blank Border Cats

Will Lydon entered Tuesday night’s start with a miniscule 0.45 earned run average in three starts.

He managed to lower it.

Lydon tossed eight shutout innings, yielding just two hits and two walks to lead the Willmar Stingers to a 7-0 win over the Thunder Bay Border Cats at Tbaytel Field at Port Arthur Stadium, handing their opponent a third straight loss at home.

Lydon, a starter for the Pacific Tigers, didn’t allow a hit until there were two outs in the fourth, when Thunder Bay’s Carter McEachern laid down a perfect bunt and beat a weak throw to first. But the Cats were unable to rally around their first base runner of the night en route to the lopsided loss and dropped back to .500 at 10-10.

First baseman Mikael Mogues had the only other Cats hit, a two-out, fifth-inning double. He too was stranded.

“All the outings that I’ve had this summer, I’ve just told myself to forget every past inning. So I throw an inning, come back in, clear my mind and go back out there and pitch like it’s the first inning every game. So it’s been working for me,” said Lydon, a native of Lodi, Calif.

Whatever works.

The 6-foot-3 Lydon was simply dominant against the Border Cats, retiring the first 11 batters he faced, then mowed down 10 straight before being lifted to start the ninth, having thrown 106 pitches.

Thunder Bay manager Danny Benedetti said they knew what they were in for with Lydon on the mound.

The game plan just didn’t pan out.

“I think he just threw a lot of strikes and got guys out,” Benedetti said.

In contrast, Thunder Bay’s starter Kyle Von Ruden did not have his best stuff. Three batters into the contest he gave up a two-run, first inning homerun to Stingers slugger Storm Wilson.

“Lately I’ve kind of been struggling. I’ve kind of lost my approach of what I’ve been trying to do. I was really just trying to stay back on some balls, see a little deeper. He gave me a good pitch I could handle and I let my hands do the work,” Wilson said.

“I wasn’t really trying to hit a homerun or pull the ball.”

Down 3-0 in the fifth, Von Ruden got into trouble again.

Once again it was Wilson, who chased the Thunder Bay right-hander, slamming a two-run triple to increase the Stingers lead to 5-0.

Canadian reliever Yuji Suzuki, another temporary contract on the bubble with pitching help on its way once the College World Series wraps up, promptly surrendered a two-run homer to Willmar’s clean-up hitter Ky Parrott, a ball that just kept sailing over the wall in right-centre.

“We threw a couple of guys out there today who we need to make some decisions on,” Benedetti said. “I think they gave us a little bit of information on what we need to know if they’re going to be full-time guys or (just) have them for a couple more days as temp players. It comes down to throwing strikes and getting guys out.

“We walked eight guys and hit two guys and you can’t win a ballgame like that.”

For the record, it was only seven walks.

But Benedetti’s point was made.

Brendan Kalaf and Kenny Glover Jr. combined for 4.1 innings of shutout relief to finish the game for Thunder Bay, but the offence never came around.

The Cats and Stingers, at 12-8 just a half a game out of top spot in the North Division, will go at it again on Wednesday night. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.

Claw marks: Attendance was 613. The Cats continue to languish near the bottom of the Northwoods League in fan support, with an average attendance of just 779 a night – but that’s still a 17.3 per cent increase over 2014’s final figure.