Steven Echavarria gave Midland exactly the kind of night it needed after two long ones in San Antonio: a starter who changed the temperature of the series before the RockHounds had done much of anything at the plate.
Echavarria worked 5.2 scoreless innings Thursday at Nelson Wolff Stadium, striking out seven and walking one, and Midland beat the Missions 3-0 behind a seven-hit shutout. After San Antonio piled up 20 runs over the first two games of the series, the RockHounds answered with the simpler version of baseball: get a lead, make it stand up, and let the bullpen finish the last 10 outs without giving it back.
The lead came before Midland had a hit. In the first inning, Euribiel Angeles reached on an error by left fielder Alex McCoy and wound up at third. Nate Nankil’s flyout to right ended the inning, but not before a pitch got away and Angeles came home with the RockHounds’ first lead of the series. It was not clean offense, but it counted, and on this night Echavarria made one run feel larger than it was.
San Antonio did have traffic against him. Romeo Sanabria singled in the second, Braedon Karpathios and McCoy put runners at the corners in the third, and Sanabria opened the fourth with another hit. Echavarria kept refusing the bigger inning. He got Albert Fabian swinging to end the third, then let three balls in the air carry him through the fourth.
His sharpest work came after Midland finally gave him room. Abraham Parra held the RockHounds hitless into the fifth, but Cameron Leary drew a one-out walk and CJ Rodriguez followed with Midland’s first hit, a grounder to right that deflected off Parra and sent Leary to third. That brought up Clark Elliott, who lined a single into right field to score Leary and push the lead to 2-0.
Jared Sprague-Lott kept the inning alive with an infield single to shortstop, a ball Justin DeCriscio knocked down while ranging to his right but could not turn into an out. Angeles then gave Midland the kind of at-bat that does not show up as a hit but does show up on the scoreboard, rolling a grounder to short that brought Rodriguez home for a 3-0 lead.
That was all the RockHounds got off Parra, who took the loss after allowing three runs, two earned, over five innings. It was also all they needed.
Echavarria came back out after the two-run fifth and struck out Kai Roberts, Oswaldo Linares and McCoy around Karpathios’ two-out single. He left in the sixth after Fabian walked, Sanabria flied out and Ryan Jackson took a called third strike. A.J. Causey entered with the tying run still nowhere close to the plate and got Jack Costello to fly out to center.
Causey handled the seventh, too, striking out Justin DeCriscio and Oswaldo Linares around Kai Roberts’ lineout to right. He finished with 1.1 scoreless innings, two strikeouts and no walks for his fourth hold.
Midland’s offense had one more loud reminder in the eighth. Angeles, whose first-inning drive helped produce the opening run despite going into the book as part of an error, hit a ball over Roberts’ head in center for his 12th double. It came off Harry Gustin and looked far cleaner than the first-inning sequence: a sharp line drive that carried deep enough for Angeles to stand at second. He finished 1-for-4 with a double, an RBI and a run.
The Missions’ best late chance came in the bottom half, when Jay Dill walked Karpathios before Sanabria, who went 3-for-4, singled to left with two outs to put runners at the corners. Dill kept the shutout intact by striking out Jackson, giving him a scoreless inning with two strikeouts and one walk for his seventh hold.
Blaze Pontes had to work around a leadoff single by Costello in the ninth, but DeCriscio grounded into a double play and Pontes struck out Roberts to end it. Pontes earned his fourth save.
Casey Yamauchi had two of Midland’s seven hits, and the RockHounds played error-free behind four pitchers. San Antonio also finished with seven hits, but after two nights of turning chances into crooked numbers, the Missions spent Thursday leaving them scattered.