De La Cruz leads Dragons past Lugnuts

Elly De La Cruz hit a home run and added two doubles and three RBI to lead the Dayton Dragons to a 10-8 victory over the Lansing Lugnuts on Sunday. The two clubs split the six-game series.

Dayton collected a season-high nine extra base hits, including home runs by De La Cruz and Jonathan Willems. Their 14 total hits was also a season high.

The Dragons improved to 22-10. They are in first place with a lead of 3 1/2 games over Great Lakes.

The Dragons scored four runs in the third inning to take a 4-1 lead as Willems and De La Cruz each hit two-run home runs.

De La Cruz added a run-scoring double in the fifth inning to give the Dragons a 5-2 lead, and they added three more runs in the top of the seventh to jump ahead 8-2. Doubles by Ashton Creal and De La Cruz got the inning started before Rece Hinds delivered a run-scoring single and Allan Cerda added an RBI double.

Lansing battled back with four runs in the bottom of the seventh to make it 8-6, but the Dragons responded with two in the top of the eighth to extend their lead to 10-6. Alex McGarry’s two-out, two-run triple was the big hit in the inning. Lansing closed out the scoring with single runs in the eighth and ninth innings.

Big contributors to the Dragons 14-hit attack, along with De La Cruz and Willems, were Jack Rogers, who had a double, triple, walk, and two runs scored; Cerda, who added a single, double, walk, and RBI; Creal, who had three hits including a double with a walk, three runs scored, and a stolen base.

TUESDAY’S GAME

Quad Cities at Dayton, 7:05 p.m., 980