MUSKEGON – Not too many times does a baseball team gives up 10 runs and still wins the game. But that happened to the Muskegon Clippers on Friday night at Marsh Field.

The Clippers started their short two-game homestand knowing they were playing a much-depleted Michigan Monarchs team, who sent a lot of their players to Alaska to play in a tournament.

The Monarchs started the game with just nine players, then around the second inning had three more join the team last minute.

Michigan didn’t let its small roster stop them from competing as it avoided a seven-inning run rule and almost managed to complete a nine-inning contest.

The Clippers managed to mercy-rule the Monarchs through eight innings in a high-scoring 20-10 affair.

Muskegon improves to 11-1 on the season and will face the Monarchs (6-8) tomorrow at home before playing them again on Sunday on the road.

“Offensively I think we did a lot of things right,” said Clippers manager Logan Fleener. “This game gets hard when it gets messy. When the pace of the game slows down it takes us out of our at bats. I thought we were below average as a team, and we still found a way to get a win even when we didn’t play well.

The Clippers were led offensively by Colin Cornwell with four hits, including a double, and four RBIs. Jabin Bates added four hits, including a double, four runs scored and two RBIs, while Aaron Piasecki had three hits, four runs scored and two RBIs.

Gavin Sitarz tossed the win for Muskegon, pitching two innings of relief and allowing five earned runs on five hits.

Starting pitcher Jaxon Huffman tossed four innings, allowing three earned runs on four hits while striking out five batters.

“The bummer about being the guy in charge is that everybody in the stands is enjoying a win because we are up big and I am thinking that’s great but every arm I use tonight, I can’t use tomorrow, Fleener said. “The good news is Matthew Hoover has been outstanding for us and he will start tomorrow.”

The Monarchs jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning and held the advantage until the second inning when the Clippers took a 4-3 lead.

Muskegon added another five runs in the third to take a 9-3 advantage before the Monarchs scored a single run in the fourth to cut the deficit to 9-4.

The Clippers scored another five-spot in the fifth to take a 14-4 lead but gave up three runs in the sixth, which cut their lead to 14-7.

Muskegon added two runs in the bottom of the sixth to take a 16-7 lead, but the Monarchs countered with three in the seventh to cut the Clippers advantage to 16-10 at the seventh inning streak.

The Clippers almost ended the game in the bottom half of the seventh inning, scoring a run to take a 17-10 lead with the bases loaded but couldn’t score those runs to end the game.

Muskegon managed to finally end the game in the eighth inning, scoring the three runs needed to implement the 10-run mercy rule.