Scrappers have a long night in loss to Spikes

Staff report

NILES

It’s never a good sign for a baseball team to have more errors than hits on its boxscores.

It’s also never a good sign when the opponent has more runs than hits.

Both scenarios mean your team gave up way too many unearned runs.

Thursday night at Eastwood Field, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers committed five errors, and the State College Spikes took advantage despite getting only six hits, in a 10-1 New York-Penn League victory.

The Scrappers were held to just one run in each game of the series, but won the opener 1-0 on Tuesday night with solid pitching and defense.

Those attributes did not make their return on Thursday night.

The big blow for State College came in the eighth inning, a grand slam by Chase Lyles, his sixth home run of the season, to highlight the Scrappers’ six-run rally.

Most of the damage came against Scrappers’ reliever Kyle Smith, who — after Andrew Maggi reached on an error for the third time in the game — issued three walks and hit a batter in the next four at-bats.

Smith was replaced by James Ehlert, who promptly surrendered the grand slam to Lyles.

Incredibly, Maggi scored three times for the Spikes, despite going — officially — 0 for 4.

Santos also hit a double and scored three runs.