Big crowd, big arms spark Stormers to win in home opener

The Lancaster Stormers opened their home season and celebrated their 20th anniversary in the way manager Ross Peeples would have chosen.

With pitching and defense. Mostly pitching.

Starter Brad Markey and two relievers combined to throw a five-hitter as the Stormers beat the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars 6-1 before a celebratory crowd of 6,324 Tuesday at Clipper Magazine Stadium.

The Stormers won their second straight after losing the first three of a season-opening series with the Long Island Ducks.

The game was played largely under dark, storm-threatening skies, with the wind blowing in hard from center field at times.

It was a celebratory night anyway for a club that will attempt to win an unprecedented third straight Atlantic League championship this season.

“The guys fed off the crowd out there,” Peeples said. “I’m sure they were amped up, but it went very smoothly. I thought it was a fun ballgame to watch.”

Hagerstown got a first-inning double and scratched out a run on an infield single in the ninth. Otherwise, the Boxcars had no one reach second base.

Markey went six innings and improved his early ERA to 0.84.

“He threw strikes — really pounded the zone,” Peeples said. “That’s the name of the game. He was impressive to watch, I thought.”

Markey threw 83 pitches, 57 for strikes, before giving way to lefty Max Green, who struck out the side in the seventh. Noah Bremer took it from there, and yielded an unearned run in the ninth.

“We didn’t throw a lot of strikes in Long Island,” Peeples said. “It was tough to throw (in the cold and wind) up there. But we like the arms we have and the mix. We have an idea who our (late-inning) guys are going to be, but they have to pitch their way into it.”

Hagerstown starting pitcher Parker Markel threw a six-inning no-hitter vs. York last week. Markel, a 33-year-old right-hander with elite-looking stuff, was in the big leagues as recently as 2022.

The Stormers didn’t hit him much, but Markel walked six and hit a batter, so they threatened a lot.

They broke through and ended Markel’s night in the fifth on Jack Conley’s single, the hit batter, a sac bunt by Trace Loehr and Isan Diaz’s sacrifice fly.

Then the Stormers lit up the Hagerstown bullpen.

They greeted reliever Rafael Terry with another run on Gaige Howard’s infield hit and a tracer to the left-field corner for a double by Joseph Carpenter.

They broke it open with four in the seventh, the big blow a two-run double by Howard (2-for-5, two runs, two RBIs), which came just after an RBI single by Cristian Santana (3-for-5, one run, one RBI).

Before all that, there was hoopla.

The club presented 2023 Atlantic League championship rings to the returning players, coaches and Peeples.

The first 1,800 adults in the ballpark received free replicas of the rings, which are as big and glitzy as their big-league counterparts.

Hundreds of youth baseball players joined the Stormers on the field before the game. The three managers who have won championships here, Tom Herr (2006), Butch Hobson (2014) and Peeples (2022 and 2023), threw ceremonial first pitchers, or to be precise allowed family members to throw them.

Then general manager Mike Reynolds and the team’s staff led the crowd in a champagne (or whatever fans happened to be drinking) toast to 20 years of pro baseball in Lancaster.