Tanner McIntyre threw a complete game in Friday's opener, but the Studs hammered the Crabs on Saturday and Sunday.
The Crabs learned two things this weekend: the Seattle Studs are studs with the bat, and Tanner McIntyre's a pretty good pitcher.
McIntyre held the Studs to just one unearned run on six hits in the Crabs' 2-1 victory in Friday's series opener, but the Seattle offense ran rampant on Saturday and Sunday, posting 22 hits in a 13-1 win on Saturday and tacking on 15 more in a come-from-behind 8-5 victory before a packed house on Father's Day to take the series 2-1 and drop the Crabs' overall record to 8-4.
Friday's game was an old-school pitcher's duel, fitting for two old-time ballclubs that have been around for at least 50 years. McIntyre was dominant, throwing a complete game and yieiding just the one run on two bloops and an error in the second inning.
The Studs' David Benson was nearly as good, but the Crabs managed to get to him twice in the fifth. Bradley Zimmer hit a one-out homer to tie the game, and then Spencer Duggan doubled to the wall in left and scored on a single by Ty Afenir.
But while the Studs' pitchers continued to find success the rest of the weekend (they allowed runs in only three of the 27 innings), the same could not be said for the Crabs. The Studs scored early and often on Saturday, hammering Drew Bradshaw, Evan Ewing and Jimmy MacWilliam. Bradshaw took the loss, his first of the year.
Sunday started off promisingly enough for the home team in front of the big crowd, as the Crabs jumped out to a 5-0 lead after the first inning, benefitting from two Studs errors and another home run from Zimmer, his team-leading fourth of the summer. But that would be it for Humboldt's offense, and the Studs slowly but surely began to chip away at the deficit.
They scored once in the third, once in the fifth and twice in the sixth to pull within one, and then hung a four-spot up in the eighth to claim a lead they wouldn't relinquish. Garrett Breda and Caleb Brown had the big hits in the inning — Breda's two-run freeway ball gave the Studs their first lead of the game, and Brown's two-out single added two insurance runs that dimmed any hopes the Crabs had of rallying. Jason Hampton took the loss in relief of Johnny Malero.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Crabs welcome the Marysville Gold Sox back to the ball park for the first time in a few years, and they look to be just as formidable an opponent as the Studs. The Gold Sox were undefeated on the season until the Redding Colt .45s ended their 35-game winning streak on Sunday night. Game time is 7 p.m. both nights.
