Boone Bats Come Alive Late To Beat Winter Park

The Winter Park Wildcats were three outs away from winning their fourth game of the season Wednesday night when they hosted the Boone Braves. The Wildcats held a late lead, but an offensive outburst in the seventh propelled the Braves to a 8-5 victory in a non-district game.

The Wildcats (3-3) sent David Bulmer to the mound to face the Braves. Lead-off batter Chris Jones took the first pitch he saw from Bulmer and sent a hard line-drive into deep center-field for a triple. He was quickly brought home by Tim Kaiser, who hit a sacrifice fly into the outfield to score Jones from third to take a one run lead into the bottom half of the inning. The Wildcats matched the Braves first inning run with one of their own. Braves starter Jimmy Robbins walked lead-off batter Wade Cuda and then saw him cross the plate later in the inning on a base hit from Elijah Cabell.

The Braves (3-3) quickly fell behind the Wildcats in bottom of the second. Lead-off batter Nate Rotenberger doubled to center-field and then made his way to third on a wild pitch from Robbins. Later in the inning, Rody Webb put a 1-0 pitch into play and proved to be enough for Rotenberger to score the go-ahead run. Before entering the seventh inning, the Wildcats increased their lead to 4-1 with another run from Rotenberger and one from Webb.

Although they couldn’t find their offensive rhythm early on, it didn’t take the Braves batters long to heat up in the seventh inning. Tyler Colson began the inning with a lead-off single. Colson came around to score the second run for the Braves later in the inning to kickstart the rally. Later in the inning with a slim 6-4 lead, Colson had one more chance to make an impact and he doubled into left-field, bringing home Robbins and D’Aundre Heyliger.

The Wildcats were able to score a run in the bottom of the seventh to close the gap to three, but the deficit proved to be too much as the Braves held on to win their third game of the season.

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