Israel 002 131 113 12 15 1 Lithuania 100 100 000 2 7 3
Israel has won game one of the best-of-three playoff series against Lithuania. On Friday afternoon at the ballpark in Utena, Lithuania Israel scored in each of the last seven innings en route to a 12-2 win over Lithuania. Israel now needs only one more win to qualify for the 2019 European Championship in Bonn and Solingen, Germany (September 7 to 15, www.baseball-em.de). Game two of the series will be played on Saturday at 2pm.
Lithuania had actually the better start into the game, when Mantas Cerniauskas had a RBI single in the first. But Israel answered with a two-run home run by Rob Paller in the third and continued the scoring afterwards. Paller hit another home run and drove in four runs overall. Mitch Glasser, Blake Gaillen, Simon Rosenbaum and Jeremy Wolf also went deep. Joey Wagman struck out ten in six innings, allowing seven hits, two runs (1 ER) and a walk. Eimantas Zickus took the loss.
The winner of the playoff series will be placed into Pool A at the European Championship, facing the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain and Czech Republic.