Ducks defeat Hagerstown Flying Boxcars in Game 1 of North Division championship series
Ramon Santos closes a win for the Ducks in Game 1 of the Atlantic League's North Division championship series against the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars in Central Islip on Tuesday. Credit: Peter Frutkoff
Mistakes matter, more so than ever in the playoffs. With the Long Island Ducks trailing Hagerstown after starter Leonardo Taveras allowed six runs on three walks and six hits, including two home runs in just 2 ⅔ innings, it looked like the Ducks had made one too many mistakes to bounce back.
Yet this is the same Ducks team that battled through a wild stretch of games, qualifying via a tiebreaker, to even make it to Game 1 of the Atlantic League’s North Division championship series. And with Hagerstown making three fielding errors of its own, the Ducks took full advantage.
Long Island won, 7-6, over Hagerstown Tuesday at Central Islip’s Fairfield Properties Ballpark in Game 1 of the best-of-5 North Division championship series. Chris Roller scored the winning run in the seventh inning after reaching first off a throwing error by Hagerstown’s Cristhian Rodriguez. Wilmer Difo’s RBI single sent Roller home to give the Ducks their first lead of the game.
Yet the game was almost lost earlier before Tanner Jacobson relieved Taveras with two on and two out in the third inning. Jacobson proceeded to strike out three in 3 ⅓ hitless innings with one walk.
“He pretty much won us the game,” manager Lew Ford said. “He kept us right there. He took all the momentum and really quieted their bats.”
Jacobson threw 30 of his 47 pitches for strikes, finishing with three punchouts.
“I just wanted to pick up my teammate,” Jacobson said. “I was waiting to go back out, but the manager gave me the handshake and said, ‘Good job.’ I knew that we got guys in the pen that are going to get it done.”
Garrett Crowley, Sal Romano and Rafael Kelly combined to throw two hitless innings. Ramon Santos secured his 14th save with a scoreless ninth, striking out Jared Carr, Danny Ortiz and Darick Hall with 96 and two 95-mph fastballs, respectively.
“The other team knows when [Santos] comes in the game, their day’s pretty much done,” Ford said. “And they’ve said as much. He’s definitely a presence for us at the back end.”
Hagerstown starter Connor Curlis allowed six runs on four hits and one walk with eight strikeouts in 5 ⅔ innings, including a four-run fourth inning kicked off by Alsander Womack’s solo homer. Marcus Chiu went 2-for-4 with a double and hit a two-out, two-run homer in the sixth inning to tie the game at 6.
“They picked each other up, and that was really what it was about today,” Jacobson said. “Just picking each other up, trying to get the first one out of the way and take this game into the series with us and build off it.”
Michael Sicoli covers high school sports for Newsday. He graduated from Quinnipiac in 2022 and left with a master’s degree in sports journalism in 2023.
