One day after giving up nine runs the Florence Freedom pitchers shut out the Midwest Sliders. Ingoglia pitched a gem with seven scoreless innings giving up only five hits and striking out a whopping eleven batters. Ibanez pitched a scoreless eighth inning and Castle came in to close it out in the ninth. Castle pitched a one-two-three ninth to record his third save of the season and complete the shutout.

Florence struck first with two runs in the bottom of the fourth inning. Grogan lead off the inning with a single, his second on the afternoon. After a strike out from Ryan Bashum, Angel Molina hit a sharp ground ball back to the pitcher Joey Doan. Doan turned around and fired the ball into center field; which allowed Grogan to go to third on the error. Mckinney singled through the left side and Grogan scored the first run of the game. Things got interesting as Welch hit a weak ground ball to the second baseman Robbie Hine. Hine stepped in the baseline to field the ball and collided with Mckinney, who was running hard from first base. Hine dropped the ball and much to the protest of Midwest manager Coleman all the runners remained safe, loading the bases. Mottram hit a sac fly to score Mckinney and give the Freedom a two to nothing lead.

Two runs would prove to be all the support Ingoglia needed although Florence did tack on an insurance run in the bottom of the seventh. Aided by the sloppy play of the Midwest Sliders, Eddie Gonzalez recorded his first RBI of the season on a sac fly to shallow left field. Welch ran hard from third base and barely beat the throw from left fielder Troy Ferguson. Welch had a spectacular head first slide just getting around the tag from catcher Ryley Westman to extend the Freedom lead to three to nothing.

Ingoglia came within one strikeout of the Freedom record for most strikeouts in a game after recording eleven punch outs. Craig Trent owns the current strikeout record with twelve punch outs in a game last season.

The Florence Freedom improve their record to four wins and three loses, one game over five hundred. The loss drops the Midwest Sliders to just one and seven in the 2008 season. Midwest won the first game of the series and Florence won today’s game, which was the second in the series. The two teams will play the rubber match tomorrow night at 7:05 p.m.