Mallards drop out of first place, suffer series sweep to Honkers Thursday

Second baseman Adam McClain (Memphis) provided the only highlight of the night in hitting a two-run home run in the fourth inning to score the Mallards lone runs.

Box Score

Rochester, Minn – August 6, 2009. Rochester denied Madison starter Matt Jansen his seventh win of the year by posting a 12-2 victory at Mayo Field on Thursday night, dropping the Mallards to a half-game behind La Crosse for the top spot in the South Division while maintaining its four-game lead in the North.

Thursday night’s match-up between Madison’s Matt Jansen (Purdue) and Rochester’s Zach Robertson (Iowa) featured a pair of hurlers whom each sported a sub-3.00 ERA. What presumably could have been a pitcher’s duel proved to be far from it.

Jansen (Purdue) endured a rough start, followed a one-out walk and a hit-by-pitch by surrendering a three-run homer to the Rochester clean-up hitter, Danny Brock (St. Louis), to lead off the first inning for the Honkers. It was Brock’s sixth home run of the season.

Robertson (Iowa) had his fair share of control problems as well. In fact, the left-hander walked four Madison batters through the first four innings and gave up a two-run home run to Adam McClain (Memphis) to pull the Mallards to within a run at 3-2 after four. McClain followed a 4-for-5 night at the plate yesterday with his second home run in a week and sixth of the season.

Both pitchers would settle down considerably. Despite walking four, Robertson had recorded nine punch outs through the first five innings while Jansen sat down 12 straight hitters following the home run by Brock. That streak ended with a single by Aaron Johnson (Illinois) in the fifth. The defense would have his back, however, as he got Scott Berke to hit into the 5-4-3 double play to end the frame.

The junior Boilermaker seemed to be headed on the right track...until the sixth, when a Honker five-spot derailed the left-hander. Jansen struck out the first batter of the inning, but then allowed six of the next seven batters to reach before giving way to reliever Ross Hellenbrand (Winona State). A 3-2 lead turned into an 8-2 blowout.

The Mallards had no answer in the seventh and wouldn’t against the Honker pitching staff for the remainder of the evening. Brock, though, was a one man wrecking crew, collecting three hits in five at-bats while driving in four runs and scoring three. Northwoods League home run leader, Corey Jones (Cal State Fullerton), added insult to injury by smacking his 13th long ball of the season and tallied RBI numbers 40 and 41 in helping the hosts to the 12-2 win.

Robertson (5-3) picked up his fifth win of the season, striking out 11 while allowing just four hits over six innings of work. Jansen (6-3) saw his ERA balloon from 2.71 to 3.50 in suffering just his third loss of the year after allowing a season-high eight runs over 5.2 innings.

La Crosse turned in an 11-2 victory over the South’s first half champion, Eau Claire, on Thursday night and leap-frogged over the Mallards and into first place by one-half game with four games remaining.

Madison and La Crosse will play out the final four games of the regular season at their respective home ballparks. The Mallards will begin a two-game series with Eau Claire at 7:05 p.m. on Friday at the friendly confines of Warner Park before welcoming in Green Bay for a two-game set.

Tomorrow will be Dejope Gaming Little Bit of Vegas Night at the “Duck Pond”. It will feature the King as well as the much-anticipated candy drop following the game. Boston’s Restaurant and Sports Bar will sponsor a mini bat giveaway to the first 500 kids and fans will have a chance to pitch to Hall of Famer Paul Molitor during the MLB Alumni Game on August 21, Click here to learn now.

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