Grizzlies Report for April 30: Fresno 3, El Paso 0
Saturday recap – Danny Worth, Tony Kemp and Eury Perez – three of the most potent bats in the lineup – starred at the plate along with recently arrived Jake Marisnick as Fresno beat El Paso 3-0 in game 3 of the four-game series. Worth, who entered leading the team in hitting at .347, singled to drive in a run in the first and Kemp (.308) tripled in Perez and scored on Marisnick’s single in the fifth in support of the four-hit pitching of Mike Hauschild (2-2). The right-hander needed 66 pitches to get through his seven innings after beginning the night with a 6.35 ERA. Perez, hitting .325, was 2 for 3 in the ninth spot. Jandel Gustave pitched a perfect eighth and James Hoyt allowed only a hit in the ninth for his PCL-leading sixth save. The game took just 2 hours.
Up next – Fresno LH Tommy Shirley (3-0, 2.12 ERA), the early-season ace for the Grizzlies, faces El Paso RH Daniel McCutchen (3-1, 5.73) at 1:05 p.m. Sunday in the series finale at Chukchansi Park. Shirley hasn’t gone deep in his games, his longest a 6 2/3-scoreless-inning effort April 19 at Salt Lake, but has struck out 13 and walked just four in his 17 innings this season. His most recent outing also was his roughest, as he allowed three homers and four runs Monday at Reno, though the former ninth-round pick (by Houston in the 2010 draft) still picked up the victory in a 7-4 Grizzlies win. McCutchen, who has pitched professionally since 2006 (including parts of five seasons in the majors), is still whittling down his ERA from a five-inning, six-run season debut at Reno. In his past three starts, he’s allowed three runs or less with an 11-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Solved, for now – El Paso OF Hunter Renfroe is the reigning Pacific Coast League player of the week (minor league-best 1.048 slugging and 1.548 OPS from April 18-24) and went 3 for 8 in his previous two games before being shut down in the first three of the series versus Fresno. He is 0 for 12 with four strikeouts entering Game 4 on Sunday.
The Fresno Bee
This story was originally published April 30, 2016 at 9:28 PM with the headline "Grizzlies Report for April 30: Fresno 3, El Paso 0."