The Clearwater Threshers game scheduled for Friday night against the Vero Beach Devil Rays was cancelled due to smoke in the air. The smoke has been in the area for more than a week with a tropical storm off of the east coast carrying winds and smoke down to Clearwater from a series of wild fires burning in Georgia and north Florida. Most days the wind pattern has changed in the late afternoon as the gulf winds move inland when the weather cools later in the day.
On Friday night the winds never changed and with health concerns for the players the game was cancelled and will be made up as part of a double header on Saturday shceduled to begin at 5:00 weather/smoke permitting.
The Threshers have split the first two games in this series winning in an afternoon game on Wednesday 3-1 thanks to back-to-back eighth inning home runs from Jeremy Slayden and John Urick. Carlos Carrasco took the mound for the Threshers throwing eight excellent innings giving up just one run on four hits with eight strikeouts and two walks to lower his ERA to 4.05 and pick up his fourth win of the year to move his record to 4-1 on the season.
The Threshers got a 1-0 lead in the third when Matt Thayer walked and scored on a Greg Golson double, but the V-Rays tied things in the seventh with a solo home run off of Carrasco. The Threshers answered in the eighth inning with back-to-back home runs from Jeremy Slayden and John Urick to take a 3-1 lead in the game, with closer Mike Zagurski shutting down any hope of a Rays rally in the ninth by fanning all three batters he faced to secure the 3-1 victory.
The team lost on Thursday 8-6 with starter Dan Brauer having his first bad outing of the year. Brauer was only able to make it 2.2 innings in the game giving up six runs on five hits with six walks and three strikeouts. With the loss the Threshers dropped to second place one game behind the Sarasota Reds.
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