DAVENPORT, IOWA (August 16, 2021) — After leaving eleven men on base for the second-straight ballgame, the Quad Cities River Bandits were crushed by the Beloit Snappers 9-1 on Saturday night at Modern Woodmen Park.
Quad Cities’ starter, Dante Biasi, only worked two innings in his second professional start and fell behind on Kole Enright’s RBI single and Seuly Matias’s fifth error of the season, which allowed Troy Johnson to also score on the play and put Beloit on top 2-0.
After George Soriano retired the Bandits one-two-three in the bottom of the second and stranded a Tucker Bradley walk in the third, his team’s lead doubled on a two-run homer by Marcos Rivera, who took C J Eldred deep for a two-run blast.
While Eldred rebounded and faced one over the minimum in a scoreless fifth inning, Quad Cities’ offense was held down by Soriano who struck out his eighth and ninth batters in a clean bottom-half.
In the sixth, Eldred again ran into trouble with the long-ball and, after striking out the first two men he faced in the frame, gave up his second home-run to Rivera, a solo shot, and then another two-run blast, this time to Connor Scott who made it 7-0, Snappers.
Michael Massey’s lead-off single gave some life to the Bandits’ bats in the bottom half and led to Gavin Stupienski driving in his team’s only run of the game against newly-entered Cody Mincy. However, that was all they would plate as Mincy got Will Hancock to fly out and end the rally.
Yohanse Morel provided the offense a chance with a scoreless seventh inning, but after Mincey stranded the bases loaded in the bottom-half, Beloit tacked on two more in the eighth with Kameron Misner’s RBI single and an error to extend the Snappers’ lead to 9-1.
Mitch Ellis gave the Bandits a scoreless top of the ninth and Bradley notched a two-out triple in the bottom half, but Anthony Maldonado got Massey to fly out to center to end the game and his clean two innings of relief.
Thanks to ten strike-outs and just one earned run over 5.2 innings, Soriano (3-1) earned the win for the Snappers, while Biasi (4-2) got the loss with two runs, one earned, in two innings of work.
ABOUT THE BANDITS: The 2021 season marks the River Bandits’ first year as a new Advanced-A Major League affiliate. As such, the team will be offering higher-quality baseball than has ever before been played in the Quad Cities. Additionally, the Bandits will welcome a new MLB affiliate to the Quad Cities, the Kansas City Royals. The River Bandits anchor the Quad Cities’ sports-market, which The Sports Business Journal named the top minor-league sports-market in the country in 2015 and second-best minor-league market in its 2017 follow-up ranking. In 2015, 2017, and again in 2019, the River Bandits earned Ballpark Digest’s award for “Best Charitable Works” in Minor League Baseball, the only club to win that coveted award three times. For more information, visit www.riverbandits.com or contact General Manager Joe Kubly at (563) 333-2768
