Pitching Staff Vanishes Voyager Offense in 3-2 Glacier Win

Flathead Valley, MT. – The Glacier Range Riders (34-47, 17-17 second half) scraped out a narrow 3-2 win Saturday night against the Great Falls Voyagers (42-39, 15-19 second half) in front of a record crowd of 2,608 people at Flathead Field. The win was in large part due to the stellar pitching trio of Kevin Kyle, Mike Biasiello, and Justin Coleman.

Kyle had his ninth start of the season for the Range Riders and he set the tone early for solid pitching from the Glacier staff. Over his five innings pitched, Kyle dusted six batters, allowed just two hits (a bloop single and a swinging bunt), and no earned runs. In the fifth, Great Falls was able to put runners on the corners with two outs, put Kyle made his final pitch count, striking out Breydon Daniel looking. It would end up being the first win of Kyle's professional career.

The offense scored their three runs early, with all three runs not coming off of base knocks. After Ryan Cash doubled to lead off the bottom of the first, and after a Brandt Broussard groundout got Cash to third, Dean Miller pushed him across the plate with an RBI groundout. In the third, it was again Miller picking up an RBI, when the Glacier first baseman hit a sacrifice fly that scored Mason Dinesen. One inning later, it was Dinesen who grabbed the final Glacier RBI of the day, after scoring Ben McConnell on a fielder's choice.

Biasiello inherited the game from Kyle and didn't allow a hit from the first ten batters he faced in his outing. Eventually, the Voyagers reached on a bunt single, and that slow roller was followed up with a hard slap over the left field wall for a home run that made it just 3-2. Great Falls followed up that homer with a double off the wall which was enough for Nick Hogan to bring on Coleman for the four-out save.

Coleman didn't just get the final four batter out…he sliced and diced the final four Voyagers with a quartet of strikeouts. First, in the eighth, with the tying run standing in scoring position, Coleman struck out Chris Monroe to retire the Great Falls scoring opportunity. In the ninth, he continued to refuse to allow the ball in play, striking out the first two batters swinging, and when the standing room only crowd rose to their feet, Coleman slammed the door shut with a strikeout looking for his sixth save of the season.

The Range Riders will host their final Sunday game of the year tomorrow when the meet the Voyagers for a 1:05 PM first pitch at Flathead Field. Arn's BBQ food truck will be at the stadium, and it will also be the final chance for kids to run the bases postgame! Tickets can be bought at https://ridgerunbaseball.ticketsocket.com/#/event-list or in-person at the Flathead Field box office starting at 11:30 AM.