In his strongest outing of the season, Jordan Kraus led the Florence Freedom, presented by Titan Mechanical Solutions, past the Evansville Otters with a complete-game, sweep-completing 3-0 shutout on Thursday night at Bosse Field.

Kraus (9-4) allowed just six hits and three walks in the game, matching his second-highest total of the season with eight strikeouts and earned his ninth win, tying him for first in the Frontier League.

The win gave the Freedom (48-28) their first series sweep of the second half and extended the teams lead over the second-place Otters (40-34) to seven games.

Florence pushed across two runs in the third inning against Luc Rennie (5-4), as Austin Wobrock singled and scored promptly on a double to left field by Garrett Vail, who tagged up and advanced to third on a Daniel Fraga flyout before coming home on a groundout to second base by Taylor Oldham.

In the fourth, Collins Cuthrell walked and moved to second on a single by Jordan Brower, and Wobrock added to the Freedom lead with a groundball single to right-center, plating Cuthrell. Browers single stretched his hitting streak to 13 games, the longest by a Freedom player in 2017, while Oldham extended his streak to a personal-best eight games on a fifth-inning double.

Rennie would last six innings and strike out five while scattering six hits, but took the loss after receiving no run support. Shane Weedman, Colton Freeman and Jason Broussard allowed a combined five walks over three innings of relief, but prevented the Freedom from scoring the rest of the night.

The Freedom will open a three-game series at home against the Gateway Grizzlies on Friday, with first pitch scheduled for 7:05 p.m. at UC Health Stadium. Braulio Torres-Perez (3-1) will start against Gateway right-hander Dalton Shalberg (0-0).

The Florence Freedom are members of the independent Frontier League and play all home games at UC Health Stadium located at 7950 Freedom Way in Florence, KY.The Freedom can be found online at FlorenceFreedom.com, or by phone at 859-594-4487.

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Kraus gem helps Freedom sweep Otters; three-game weekend series against Grizzlies begins tonight - User-generated content (press release)...