By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
Sacrifice flies don’t get much louder than the one Worcester Red Sox catcher Jett Bandy hit at Frontier Field on Wednesday afternoon.
Bandy thought he had a go-ahead grand slam off Rochester reliever Dakota Bacus in the eighth inning, but left fielder Cody Wilson committed some thievery instead. Wilson jumped to snag the fly ball, which would have cleared the fence on its own, to hold Worcester to a single run, tying the game at 3.
Red Wings third baseman Carter Kieboom led off the bottom half by launching a longer home run to left, his fourth of the season, to break the deadlock. The Red Wings, who fell victim to a 10-run, 16-hit bombardment on Tuesday evening, added an insurance run and won 5-3 to snap a five-game losing streak.
“(Wilson)’s been working at his offense,” LeCroy said, “but what he did today was save our ballgame, and that’s the message for him every day: to continue to work on offense, but the reason you’re here is to play big league defense. And that’s what he’s done so far.”
The Washington Nationals designated Rogelio Armenteros for assignment on June 15, allowing any Major League Baseball franchise to claim him on waivers. Armenteros responded by steadying a battered pitching staff in his return, tossing his best outing since May 30. The Havana, Cuba native held the fearsome Red Sox lineup to five hits and one run over 4.2 innings. He walked three batters but struck out six.
Top Sox prospect Jarren Duran smashed Armenteros’s lone mistake off the right field scoreboard, but he departed with a 2-1 lead.
“The one thing that I saw today that was different than his other outings was his velocity actually went up a bit,” LeCroy noted. “His other secondary pitches feed off that fastball and he got a lot better separation than he’s had earlier in the season, so maybe the time off gave him a little boost to his velocity. He battled. He ran out of a little gas there in the fifth, but Kyle (Lobstein) came in and did a nice job of holding it down. Really a good team effort.”
Worcester applied pressure on Ronald Peña in the eighth, loading the bases without hitting the ball past the infield. A walk and two infield singles set the table for Jonathan Arauz, who lined a single into right. LeCroy quickly pulled Peña for Bacus, who inherited a bases-loaded, no-out situation and escaped by allowing just the one run.
Kieboom, who also recorded two RBI on Tuesday night, homered for the first time since June 6; he and Luis García, his partner on the left side of the infield, each homered in that win over Worcester as well. García ripped Tanner Houck’s 1-2 fastball to left to lead off Rochester’s first inning, his fourth leadoff home run in 22 opportunities. Kieboom had the proverbial “green light” to swing in a 2-0 count and took advantage.
“It’s exciting, man,” he remarked. “End of the game is always exciting, especially when it’s a close one like that… Any time you come up in a moment like that, especially late in the game, nobody on, nobody out, you’re just trying to get on base and look for a good pitch to hit. You keep your mentality the same and have good at bats, you never know what can happen.”
Kieboom, Palka, Jake Noll and Blake Swihart collected two hits apiece. Rochester has started the week-long series with the Red Sox with 11 runs on 20 hits over the first two games.
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost 20 in a row or you’ve won 20 in a row: winning is always fun,” Kieboom commented. “It’s just as fun all the time. So that’s what we go out there to do, is to win every day and play our hardest.”
Leave a Reply