Tapia and Patterson rip Inland Empire pitching, lead Nuts to third consecutive victory

Raimel Tapia and Jordan Patterson were a combined 7-for-9 with four RBIs at the top of the Modesto Nuts batting order and led the team to a 7-4 California League victory over the Inland Empire 66ers Thursday night at John Thurman Field.

Zach Jemiola, who was staked to a 5-1 lead after two innings, earned the win for the Nuts, who improve to 10-4 in the second half, one game behind first-half North Division champion Visalia.

Tapia raised his average to .320 with his first four-hit game of the season and drove in his 49^th and 50^th runs of the season – numbers that will look awfully pretty when they’re displayed on the scoreboard at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark.

Tapia, along with Nuts coach Fred Ocasio, will take part in the SiriusXM Futures All-Star Game on Sunday in Cincinnati, which will be broadcast on the MLB Network at noon. The Nuts outfielder will play for the World all-stars and Ocasio will be a member of that squad’s coaching staff. The two will leave for Sacramento late Friday after the game in Modesto for a 6:15 a.m. Saturday flight.

“(Wednesday) night was a tough night for me,” said the left-handed Tapia, who was 1-for-5 in a 4-3 win. “I was flying open; I just wanted to concentrate on staying closed and go the other way, to center field and left field.”

Tapia smashed a triple to lead off his night and then trotted home when Patterson doubled to center. No. 3 hitter Ryan McMahon flew out to the wall in left, allowing Patterson to tag up, and Correlle Prime plated Patterson with a ground out to give the Nuts a 2-1 lead they would never relinquish.

Tapia and Patterson, who raised his average to .317, touched Inland Empire’s Garrett Nuss for two more hits in the second inning, when Modesto scored three more runs to make it a 5-1 lead.

The 66ers scored a run in the third and two more in the fifth to cut the deficit to 5-4, but Patterson’s RBI single in the sixth and Tapia’s run-scoring single in the eighth gave the pitching staff some wiggle room.

“I thought this was my best outing of the year,” said Jemiola, who improved to 3-2 with the victory. “I pounded the zone like I need to and, overall, felt good.”

Sam Moll entered the game in the seventh and delivered his second consecutive solid outing after a couple of clunkers in late last month.

“I was kind of disappointed in myself,” Moll said of his last two stints in June. “But the good news, or maybe it was the bad news, is that I was only a pitch away from getting out of it each time. That was kind of frustrating.”

A 2013 third-round draft pick out of the University of Memphis, the southpaw tossed two innings and allowed just one hit while striking out three. On July 4 at High Desert, he pitched two innings and yielded only a walk.

Matt Carasiti worked around a hit in the ninth to earn his fifth save of the season.

Modesto will go for a four-game sweep of Inland Empire on Friday at 7:05 p.m. Konner Wade (3-6, 4.56) takes the hill for the Nuts against Inland Empire’s Victor Alcantara (4-5, 4.78). The San Jose Giants come to town Saturday for a three-game series.

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 12:31 AM with the headline "Tapia and Patterson rip Inland Empire pitching, lead Nuts to third consecutive victory."