By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The Rochester Red Wings have allowed multiple runs in the first inning six times this season. They have now won on four of those six occasions, including Sunday’s game at Frontier Field.
The Syracuse Mets scored the first two runs of the game but Rochester responded with seven unanswered runs, including a second-inning five-spot. The Red Wings prevailed 8-3 in front of 3,837 fans, winning the series against Syracuse 4-2 and improving their record to 13-11.
Rochester produced 40 runs in the week-long series, its most in a week this season. The club could have added even more had it not stranded the bases loaded with just one out in the fourth.
While Syracuse leadoff hitter Wyatt Young and No. 2 batter Nick Plummer combined to notch seven of the team’s eight base hits, Rochester found most of its production from the bottom of its order.
The Red Wings’ seven, eight and nine hitters accounted for five of their nine hits, tallying 10 total bases. Nick Banks’s home run in the fourth inning, his third of the season, extended the lead to 6-2. Andrew Stevenson, who Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy said will return to the leadoff spot when Dee Strange-Gordon ends his rehab assignment, led off the eighth with a walk, then stole two bases and scored on a sacrifice fly. And Tres Barrera’s first triple since Aug. 31, 2017, facilitated by Plummer’s misjudged diving catch attempt in center field, scored two baserunners.
“I like our lineup, man. We put together some good at bats,” LeCroy remarked. “Situationally, we were a lot better than we were the last few days. Our lineup, from top to bottom, it’s got a chance. Hopefully we’ll never be out of a game, especially with our offense.”
“We’re all pretty much locked in, from top to bottom,” Banks added. “There’s never a spot that you don’t trust a guy in that situation. We’re super athletic on the bases, so we’re able to make things happen even if we’re not getting extra base hits, or whatnot.”
Red Wings starting pitcher Sterling Sharp recovered from a string of three first-inning singles (one of the Mets’ two runs was recorded by groundout) to retire 11 of the last 13 batters he faced. Sharp, whose fielding error in the second inning was quickly negated by catcher Tres Barrera catching Quinn Brodey attempting to steal second base, earned his first victory of the year after three no-decisions.
LeCroy blamed the Red Wings’ defensive positioning, not Sharp, for the runs in the top of the first.
“We just had them positioned wrong,” LeCroy acknowledged. “We went off of where they normally hit them; they just hit them where we weren’t gonna be. He settled down. But to come back and score in that inning, in the second inning, to give him some life back in the game… I think that really helped Sharpie, to do what he ended up doing today.”
Syracuse hit safely just once in 10 opportunities with runners in scoring position and left 10 runners on base. A Barrera throwing error after Luis Reyes’s wild pitch allowed an unearned run to score, but the Red Wings bullpen did not allow Syracuse to inch any closer.
Reed Garrett, who inherited two baserunners when he entered the eighth inning for an injured Alberto Baldonado, earned the save after striking out the two batters he faced in the eighth and stranding two more runners in the ninth.
The Red Wings won their second series of the year and first since the opening series of the season in Toledo.
“I thought our at bats were really good throughout this whole series. We constantly put pressure on them throughout the whole thing,” LeCroy assessed. “Pitching-wise… we were in the zone more. We got in some better counts than we did at Lehigh Valley.
“…I see some guys going in the right direction on the pitching mound.”
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