ELDRED — The final box score may not accurately reflect it, but for the second consecutive game the Bradford Owls were carried to victory by a stellar pitching performance.

On Thursday, it was from the arm of sophomore Tyler Gigliotti, who stifled the Otto-Eldred (2-6) bats for six innings of work and propelled the Owls to a 6-4 win over the Terrors.

Gigliotti, who got Bradford (6-6) out of a big jam in relief work in the bottom of the seventh in Wednesday’s 3-0 win over Brookville, picked up right where he left off.

Gigliotti struck out 10 batters and allowed just four hits and one run over six innings of work. He struck out eight of the nine batters in Otto’s starting lineup and allowed only three walks.

“Tyler was throwing a lot of fastballs for strikes today,” Bradford head coach Andy Carlson said. “He still has some work to do on his breaking ball, but once he does that it’s going to be a lot easier for him. He’s got enough life on the fastball that he can get a lot of guys out.”

With the Owls holding a 6-1 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, it looked as if they were going to coast to their second consecutive victory. However, with Gigliotti at 101 pitches, Carlson had to remove his starter from the game and turn to the bullpen.

Reliever Hunter Gray had no problem getting the first two outs in the inning, but then ran into trouble. After hitting a batter, Otto’s Chase Sebastian ripped an RBI single. Then, Jacob Merry stepped up and delivered an RBI hit that also led to another run after a Bradford fielding error. Suddenly, it was 6-4.

However, with the tying run at the plate, Gray got Otto’s Nick York to fly out and end the game.

“I thought we might have a chance there at the end, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess,” Otto-Eldred head coach Jame Thomas said.

“It was a close game and part of it came down to making defensive plays,” he added. “There were a few different defensive plays that we could have made and we just didn’t. There were also a couple coaching errors on my part. I shouldn’t have sent a guy from third that didn’t make it (in the bottom of the fifth)”

Of Otto’s six losses on the season, four of them have come by three runs or less.

The Terrors did have two errors in the game, but Bradford also drove the ball all over the field on Thursday. The Owls had 12 hits, and put together their biggest inning in the third.

Bradford had five hits in that frame, including RBI doubles from Dan Manion and Caleb Nuzzo. After striking out four times over the first two innings, the Owls only went down on strikes twice over the game’s final five innings.

“The first two innings, I thought we took pretty bad at-bats,” Carlson said. “But then for five innings in a row I think we took really good at-bats. We only scored six runs but there’s a really good chance that if a couple balls don’t go right at somebody, we probably had eight or nine runs that would have gone up on the board.”

The Owls scored 19 runs in their four games this week, but their offense has been largely inconsistent this season. With just eight games remaining in the season, Carlson is hoping the hitting can complement the recent surge of pitching into a playoff berth.

After beginning the week with with tough, back-to-back losses to Brookville and St. Marys, the Owls rebounded to make of this week with two straight wins.

Bradford will now need to go on a bit of a run, and get some help, in its quest for the postseason.

“It’s nice to get these last two wins. I told them that we still aren’t playing to the best of our abilities yet. It’s nice to be 6-6 after this win, but .500 just shouldn’t be good enough,” Carlson said.

“We have to go and we have to keep playing hard,” he added. “We are .500 on the season and we can get ourselves in position to make the playoffs but we’ve got to keep pushing and getting better because we’re not playing to our best ability yet.”

The Owls are off until Monday against DuBois, but that game begins a busy week of five games in six days that will surely decide the fate of Bradford’s season.

AT ELDRED

    R H E

Bradford       003 200 1 6 12 2

Otto-Eldred   000 100 3 4 7  2

Tyler Gigliotti (10 SO, 3 BB), Hunter Gray (7), and Caleb Nuzzo

Chase Sebastian (5 SO, 3 BB), Sawyer Drummond (6) (2 SO, 1 BB) and Cole Sebastian