By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Zack Littell’s impact has been growing with the Tampa Bay Rays.
The major-league pitcher from Mebane has secured victories in two consecutive outings. That put his record at 2-2.
Littell, an Eastern Alamance graduate who has been with three organizations this year, earned his first victory with the Rays in a July 30 game in Houston, holding the reigning World Series champion Astros to two runs in five innings.
He followed that with Friday night’s six shutout innings at Detroit, where the Rays won 8-0 against the Tigers.
Entering this week, Littell had appeared in 16 games for the Rays, starting five of those.
Sock Puppets place second
The Burlington Sock Puppets finished as the Appalachian League runners-up for the second year in a row.
The Sock Puppets repeated as East Division champions in the summer collegiate baseball league. Then in last Wednesday night’s championship game, they dropped a 4-1 decision to the West Division champion Johnson City Doughboys in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Burlington trailed 3-0 in the title game until Luke Leto’s run-scoring single in the sixth inning.
The Sock Puppets had a 29-19 regular-season record, winning the division by 3½ games on the second-place Danville Otterbots. Burlington scored a league-high 331 runs. Johnson City had a 35-10 mark in the regular season.
Siegner nabs victory
Southern Alamance graduate Drew Siegner pitched in 10 games in the Coastal Plain League – a summer circuit for college players – for the Asheboro ZooKeepers. He recorded his only decision with a victory in Saturday night’s season finale in a road game against the Boone Bigfoots.
Seigner, who’s on the Campbell team, gave up three runs (two earned) in five innings in the Boone game, It was his first starting assignment for the ZooKeepers.
For Southern, Siegner was the DAC-VII Conference Pitcher of the Year in 2022.
