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Pitching Racks Up 15 Strikeouts to Lead the Way

Sioux City, IA - Chipper Jones had the Mets, David Ortiz had the Yankees and Alex Rodriguez had the Baltimore Orioles. Add to the list of ownership, Jason Garcia and the Texas Airhogs. The Explorers were able to get off the losing streak thanks to a dominant performance out of Jason Garcia who lead them to a 5-0 win. 

Garcia (3-0) picked up his third win in as many tries and now with the Explorers tallying three victories on the season the math is easy to find out who their common denominator seems to be. He breezed through seven innings of shut out baseball, allowing only two hits and a walk while racking up ten strikeouts. 

Now including last seasons complete game shut out Garcia has faced the Airhogs twice since joining the Explorers in August of 2018. He has thrown a combined 16 shut out innings, allowing only 4 hits, 3 walks and punching out 17 batters in the two starts. 

Of course his offense aided him with some run support from the get go. Kyle Wren started it off with a lead off walk in the first and would score on a Nate Samson single to right. In the second the X’s added another run, this time it was Kyle Wren coming up with the hit to drive in Dexture McCall who had started the inning with a walk, making it 2-0 Sioux City after two innings. 

Texas would only touch third base once when Garcia was on the mound. And after he hit a batter with a pitch in the fifth inning, he would not allow another man to reach base for the final two and a third innings he was out there. Highlighting his evening by striking out the side in the sixth. 

Sioux City doubled their lead in the seventh inning when Kyle Wren lead off the frame with a bunt single. The Explorers got the lead off man on base in seven of the eight innings they came to the plate. After a walk to Michael Lang and a fly out from Samson. Jose Sermo missed his first home run of the season by a mere couple of feet as he doubled off the top of the right field wall driving home a run and Dean Green followed with a bloop single, bringing home Lang to make it 4-0. 

Sioux City added their final run of the night on a ground ball from Daytona Bryden to score Luke Bonfield making it 5-0 and adding an insurance run that the bullpen would not need. 

Nathan Gercken and Matt Pobereyko took the example Garcia had set through the first seven innings and slammed the door shut on the AirHogs as they tossed a perfect eighth and ninth inning, facing six batters and striking out five of them. In total X’s pitching set down the last thirteen straight Texas hitters to end the night. 

Sioux City and Texas will play game two of the series on Tuesday at 11:05 am, for the annual Kids Day Game where local area schools are invited to attend the game. Zach Jemiola takes the hill for the X’s and will face off against Zech Lemond for Texas.