Final score: Rome 1, Bowling Green 0
(Media release from the Rome Braves):
After a long, two week road trip up the east coast, the Rome Braves returned home for six straight with the Bowling Green Hot Rods.
Cedric De Grandpre would get the starting nod for Angel Flores’s Braves, looking to add onto his already impressive stat line since being promoted to High-A Rome.
De Grandpre would go right to work, retiring the first four Bowling Green Hot Rod batters he faced in Wednesday night’s contest. Bowling Green would find mild success in putting the ball in play against De Grandpre, but the Canada native would work out of every jam he found himself in. The Hot Rods would go 0-6 with runners in scoring position, leaving seven runners on base.
Out of the twenty batters De Grandpre faced on Wednesday, he struck out nine of them. The nine strikeouts are a career high for De Grandpre, with his previous best being seven on May 23rd, 2023 when he was an Augusta GreenJacket.
After five full innings from De Grandpre, Patrick Halligan would be the first man out of the ‘pen for the Braves. Halligan would toss two innings of shutout ball, setting the stage for Jose Montilla.
With Montilla hurling the final two innings without surrendering a run, the shutout would be complete. De Grandpre, Halligan, and Montilla would combine to shutout the Bowling Green Hot Rods on Wednesday, striking out a combined ten and giving up only six hits.
Rome’s lone run of the game would come in the home half of the sixth inning as a Keshawn Ogans single would drive in Nacho Alvarez Jr. Ogans’s 29th RBI of the season puts him third amongst all Rome batters.
The one to nothing win is Rome’s thirty-second of the season, and their second of the second half. The Braves are now just two and a half game’s out of first place in the early second half of the South Atlantic League’s season.
Rome and Bowling Green will resume their six game series on Thursday night with a 7:00pm first pitch.
