By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The Rochester Red Wings’ Thursday matinee lineup was a mystery as of Wednesday evening. The Washington Nationals’ COVID-19 issues will almost certainly require minor league reinforcements to catch a plane to Philadelphia for a noon first pitch at Citizens Bank Park.
Rochester features several players worthy of a promotion of any duration, and they proved it again even in defeat on Wednesday.
Daniel Palka, who Washington took a low-risk chance on in March to see if he could help the Nats, ripped three singles, improving his OPS to .934. Jakson Reetz drove in two runs and already heard his name called in a similar pinch this month. Jake Noll scored two runs in continuing his torrid stretch. Bryan Bonnell threw three stabilizing innings of relief, scattering two hits.
Any of these top performers had reason to stay close to the phone postgame, but their team fell behind Lehigh Valley and could not finish a late-inning comeback attempt. The IronPigs won 5-3, evening the series at a game apiece.
“We played ’til the end,” Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy acknowledged. “We just didn’t pitch well enough early for us to get back in it.”
Rochester starting pitcher Ben Braymer labored through a 33-pitch first inning, allowing a leadoff triple but escaping by allowing just one run. He cruised through the second and third frames before a four-run fourth in which he surrendered a three-run home run to Rodolfo Durán, Durán’s first Triple-A hit.
LeCroy lifted Braymer after the homer, before the Red Wings recorded an out in the inning. Bonnell, Dakota Bacus and Nick Goody combined for six shutout innings out of the bullpen, but IronPigs lefthander David Parkinson (1-7) yielded just two runs on four hits in his best 5.1 innings of the season.
“(Braymer) had a lot of traffic early,” LeCroy noted. “Some questionable pitches that he missed his spot on, like the homer that kind of took us out of it. I saw some good things from Braymer; he pitched some balls with some conviction, that I liked. He just fell behind and made some mistakes that cost us some runs, but I like how more aggressive he is now than he was earlier.”
The first on-field proposal at Frontier Field since the COVID-19 pandemic began was Rochester’s most memorable moment of the night -and might still have been- until the bottom of the sixth, when the Red Wings started to rally. Adrian Sanchez lined a leadoff double, advanced to third on Ali Castillo‘s fly ball to center and scored on Palka’s single two batters later.
Reetz scored Noll, who walked, on a sacrifice fly for Rochester’s second run, but Palka tried to tag up from second to third base on the play and was gunned down by left fielder Matt Vierling for the third out.
Had Palka not decided to tag, Rochester would have runners on first (Derek Dietrich was hit by a pitch) and second with the opportunity to cut the deficit to two runs on a single.
“Just trying to do too much,” LeCroy commented. “I’d rather you try to do too much than be passive, but I think if he had to do it over he probably would have stayed at second. We learn down here.”
Rochester loaded the bases in the eighth off Cam Bedrosian, who walked in a run by issuing a base-on-balls to Reetz. Durán made another winning play, this time defensively, when he caught Rafael Bautista‘s pop-up against the backstop netting to hold the Red Wings to one run.
After a one-two-three ninth, the focus turned to the Nationals’ roster moves and who would be available for LeCroy to pencil into the lineup for Thursday’s 11 a.m. contest.
“We’re here to take care of the big league team,” LeCroy acknowledged. “If they need guys here, then we send them to ’em. It’s an opportunity for somebody, so you never know until it happens.”
Leave a Reply