4/11/16

Charleston 6 - Columbia 5


Vinny Siena continued his hot start to the season with three hits in Charleston on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough -- Columbia fell, 6-5, to the RiverDogs. The second-baseman owns a .462 batting average through four games in 2016. 

It was a wild four-game series in Charleston, with Sunday’s game featuring another walk-off. Charleston’s Thairo Estrada drove in the tying and winning runs off of Witt Haggard (L, 0-2) in the bottom of the ninth to seal it. The RiverDogs won the first games of the series in walk-off fashion, and then Columbia no-hit their counterparts on Saturday

For the fourth straight night, the Fireflies scored first, this time in the second inning. With the bases full, both Ivan Wilson and Kevin Kaczmarski drew walks to force in runs. The visitors took a 2-0 lead. 

Later in the fourth, Joe Tuschak smashed the second of his two doubles into the right-centerfield gap to begin the frame. Kaczmarski drove him in to pad the lead to 3-0. 

Charleston chipped away at the lead by plating two runs in the bottom of the fourth, but Columbia’s answer came the following half inning.Dash Winningham singled and came home to score when David Thompson drilled a liner to the wall in centerfield. Thompson dug around second and slid into third with a triple, but the relay throw to the base was off-line and skipped behind third-baseman Angel Aguilar. The error enabled Thompson to head home to extend the Fireflies’ lead back to three runs. 

Aguilar homered for Charleston in the seventh and Estrada tripled in a run later that frame to again cut the deficit to one. Columbia’s 5-4 lead vanished in the ninth. Andrew Schwaab (W, 2-0) was the winning pitcher for the RiverDogs. 

The Fireflies start a three-game series with the Rome Braves in Rome, Georgia, on Monday night at 7:00 p.m. Manager Jose Leger hands the ball to right-hander Tyler Badamo. He'll make his first start in 2016. 

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