sfoggi posted on July 20, 2011 20:31
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (July 20, 2011) - The Loggerheads handed the Lightning their 10th loss of the season, Wednesday night in Winter Haven. The streaking Lightning were finally halted at the hands of the last place Loggerheads, who picked up their 10th victory of the season with the 7-4 triumph. The win ended a seven-game losing streak for Winter Haven.
Kyle Campbell (Stetson) got the scoring started when he hit a no doubt home run to straight away leftfield in the first inning off of Leesburg starter Dylan Ortega (Brevard CC).
Ortega just didn’t have his best stuff on Wednesday and was unable to work himself out of trouble all night. The loss is just his second of the season and only the third road loss by the Lightning.
Leesburg (21-10) came back in the second when a Texas Leaguer by Tom Sicking (UTPA) with two outs scored two runs, but the offense after that was scant.
Sicking made up for an error when he came home with a throw that gunned out the runner he allowed on base and preserved the Lightning lead for the time being.
The Loggerheads (10-19) would eventually take the lead back, though, when they scored three runs in the fourth inning off of four hits. They added three more runs in the sixth inning to pad their lead and Ortega was removed from the game.
Given Ortega’s success so far this season, the off start can be chalked up to a fluke and the team will certainly look to him as they make their run down the stretch.
The Lightning took advantage of Loggerhead errors in the sixth inning and rallied for two runs cutting the lead down to three.
With only a handful of games to be played, there is a distinct split in the standings that make essentially the League into two divisions. On one hand, the Lightning and the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs are at the top of the standings and have been within a game of each other the past few weeks. DeLand finds themselves securely in third place with a winning record. Then there’s a significant gap in the standings and there sits the remaining three teams in the League. The Orlando Freedom, Sanford River Rats and Winter Haven Loggerheads are all within two games of each other, but remain 10 games behind the top tier teams.
With a new playoff format this year, only five teams make the playoffs. The last place team at the end of the regular season is eliminated and the four and five teams have a play-in game to decide which team will get the bid to compete in the postseason.
The loss on Wednesday puts the Lightning in a tie with Winter Park, whom they play Thursday night in another showdown. The game will be played at Alfond Stadium and we’ll see if any bad blood still remains from their last meeting. The game will be at 7:00 p.m. Leesburg will return to Pat Thomas Stadium on Thursday night.
Nick Beardi (Medaille College)