Hollywood Lions Take Control of Bracket With 9-2 Win Over Suns

Hot bats and a dominant pitching performance propelled the Hollywood Lions to a 9-2 win over the only other team undefeated in Bracket D, the Hofball Suns on Wednesday.

The win puts the Lions in the driver’s seat in pool play of the HSBN Fall Classic as they went to 2-0 behind an offense that has scored 20 runs in the past two games.

Lions starting pitcher Rashad Flerimond went four innings and only faced 16 batters. After going 1-2-3 in the first he started the second off by allowing the first two runners on. He quickly got back into his groove and got out of the inning only giving up two runs. Those would be the only two runs the Lions gave up all night as Flerimond had excellent command over his pitches as well as the strike zone. The Lions allowed three hits for the game.

“My curve ball was looking real good in the bullpen, and I trusted my catcher a lot with calling the pitches and he called a lot of good curve balls,” Flerimond said.

While Flerimond was shutting down the Suns, the Lions offense was doing its job to give the Lions pitcher all the support he needed. Hollywood scored in each of their first three innings as they continued to get clutch hitting and play smart on the base paths.

“We hit the ball. We had three or four extra-base hits,” Lions mananger Mike Moss said. “Anytime we do that, we are pretty good because we can run a little bit, so we steal some bases, and that was effective for us again tonight.”

The Lions scored two in the first, three in the second, one in the third and three in the fourth, but the story of the night was the dominating pitching performance from the Lions pitching staff.

Mike Nader came in to relive Flerimond and seemed to pick up right where he left off. Nader pitched three shutout innings, surrendering one hit while striking out three.

On the Suns’ side, right fielder Nick Videll recorded the team’s only RBI and center fielder Daniel Epstein had a hit and a stolen base but in the end the Lions pitchers overpowered a Suns offense that had put up 14 runs the previous night.

“We fell back into our old habits,” Suns coach Eddie Tisdale said. “You have got to be aggressive in those fastball counts. We took a lot of fastballs tonight that we probably shouldn’t have taken.”

Both teams return to the field on Saturday in hopes of advancing to the next round. The Suns face the Deerfield Lions while the Hollywood Lions take on the host Colonels.

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