Winter Park trades wins with DeLand and Winter Garden

The Florida Collegiate Summer League defending champion Sanford River Rats have stormed the league to start the season 7-3. And after a losing streak to start their season, the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs are finally pulling themselves out of a hole.

The Dawgs have seen some back and forth slugfests between themselves and the DeLand Suns (3-6) and Winter Garden Squeeze (6-3) in the past week.

On June 9 the Dawgs went to DeLand and the game was almost immediately over as Winter Park cranked out seven runs in the third inning, then piled on another eight in the next three for the easy 15-2 win. Winter Park’s Trevor Tinder gave up just a run as he grabbed the win from the mound.

On June 10 the Dawgs blasted the Suns with a 14-6 comebacker thanks to a 3-for-3, three RBI performance by designated hitter Tyler Homer and a 3-for-4, four RBI show by third baseman Jack Gonzalez. The Dawgs brought plenty of fireworks to the game with Homer, Gonzalez and Jonah Girand all contributing their first home runs of the season, while Homer and Jordan Bowersox both blasted a double each.

Justin Kortessis held the Suns back with a three-run pitching performance in six innings, striking out five.

But in the next game it was like two different teams on the field as the Dawgs went runless and only managed five hits as the Suns blasted 10 runs in the sixth inning to take the easy win. The Suns’ Wade McNabb went the distance in a truncated complete game shutout win.

The same thing happened when the Dawgs faced the Squeeze in back-to-back games to start the week, taking an 8-5 win on Monday but then giving up an 8-5 loss the next day.

In their Monday win the Dawgs didn’t get a run until the sixth inning, then blew the game open to take the comeback. Bowersox somehow ended up with four walks in the game while scoring two of the team’s runs. First baseman Sam Martin and third baseman Brooks Morgan each blasted two doubles and collected two RBI.

Tuesday the Dawgs started the game behind and mounted a comeback that came up a few runs short. Morgan nearly hit for the cycle if you count him getting beaned to make it to first base. Despite no Winter Park pitchers giving up more than two earned runs, they still took the loss.

After a road trip to Leesburg the Dawgs return home to face the Lightning at 7 p.m. Friday at Bishop Moore High School.