The Wilmington Blue Rocks (34-41) used the long ball to get past the Jersey Shore BlueClaws (41-35) by a score of 7-3 for the first of three games against the BlueClaws on Monday, July 1 at Frawley Stadium.

Matt Suggs opened up the scoring in the bottom second with a line drive laser, the first of three home runs for the Rocks, that just got over the left field fence to give the Rocks a 1-0 lead.

“It was a little bit of a liner so I was legging it out a little bit until I saw it sneak over,” Suggs said with a laugh.

Later in the inning, Johnathon Thomas singled home Gavin Dugas with a bloop single to give the Blue Rocks a 2-0 lead. Riley Cornelio took the mound looking for the shutdown inning, but Justin Crawford, the Phillies third best prospect, turned on an inside breaking ball to tie it at two. 

“Crawford honestly got lucky because that pitch was pretty in,” Suggs said. “He just put a good swing on it and Riley hung it a little bit, but at the end of the day it don’t matter.”

That proved to be the only mistake of the day for Cornelio, as he finished the day with six strong innings of two-run ball, allowing just five hits and striking out three. Today’s outing marked the ninth time in his 15 starts that he’s allowed just two or less runs. 

“He’s mixing very well right now, that’s been the key,” manager Mario Lisson said. “He’s locating his fastball well and using his secondary stuff at will, that’s the type of pitcher that he is and hopefully he can continue that. He has a good arm.”

While the Claws struggled to touch Cornelio, it was the complete opposite for the Rocks’ offense against Jersey Shore starter Braeden Fausnaught, who entered the game with a 3.53 ERA, which was the sixth lowest in the South Atlantic League. That ERA jumped up to 4.02 after Wilmington put up six runs in his 5.2 innings of work.

“We’ve seen him a couple times before and I think we just made some good adjustments at the plate that we haven’t been the last couple of starts against him,” Suggs said. “We did a good job of staying in it and making our adjustments and putting some runs up on the board.”

The lineup got a key contributor back in Murphy Stehly, who had been out since April 26. Stehly went 1-2 with two walks and a run scored.

“He’s an experienced guy,” Lisson said. “He’s shown he can hit a little bit, so he’s definitely going to help us on the offensive side and the defensive side. Today was two walks and a single, that’s kind of what we expect from him. Hopefully he can continue that.”

“It was great [to be back],” Stehly added. “Injuries suck, obviously. You gotta go down to Florida and do all the rehab. It’s a long process but it’s really nice to be back and be competitive again.”

As Lisson alluded to, Stehly’s patience at the plate helped the offense in a big way. In his four at-bats tonight, Stehly saw a total of 26 pitches. 17 of those came in his first two at-bats, which helped drive Fausnaught’s pitch count up.

“I was seeing the ball well tonight,” Stehly said. “I like facing lefties for sure. I was just trying to slow the game down.”

Stehly and the rest of the lineup will look to keep it going on Tuesday, July 2 against BlueClaws starter Mitch Neunborn. 

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