BY MIKE ROSE
Rochester, NY — The Rochester Red Wings (5-1, 43-36) have made comebacks a habit as of late and they did it again as they raced back to defeat the Indianapolis Indians (1-5, 34-45), 12-8. The see-saw affair saw the Red Wings have to dig out of an 8-4 fourth inning hole. This marked the fifth come-from-behind win for the Red Wings in the series.
“I think that’s kind of been the identity of our team this season,” Red Wings SS Jackson Cluff said. “It doesn’t matter what the score is I think we just have the mentality of every single time we go up we’re gonna try and have a quality at-bat and try and claw our way back in it. We obviously have some guys at the top of our order who with one swing and change the game here or there. So, we’ve just been trying to battle and keep ourselves in games.”
Cluff was the man who changed the game today, going 2-for-2 with five RBI. The five RBI was a professional career-high for the Red Wings SS topping his four RBI performance earlier this month on June 4.
The game was a back-and-forth affair to begin as both offenses hung crooked numbers early. Rochester opened the scoring on a first inning solo home run from Riley Adams. The Indians wasted little time forming a response as Dylan Shockley blasted his first Triple-A home run, a three-run shot, to make it 3-1 Indians. The see-saw continued into the bottom half of the inning when Cluff carried a three-run homer just over the right field wall to put the Red Wings back in front. Cluff was initially unsure if the ball was going to have the distance.
“I was just trying to get a ball to the outfield and get a sac fly or hopefully an extra-base hit so I was just trying to look for a ball up and fortunately he threw me a changeup up the first pitch and I was able to get the barrel out,” Cluff said. “I think the wind helped out a little bit, I didn’t think I had it off the bat but I knew it was going to do the job to get the run in. I was hoping maybe it would bang off the wall and the next thing I knew it was over.”
Malcolm Nunez plated one to tie the game with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly before Seth Beer launched the second three-run home run of the day for Indianapolis to make it a 7-4 game. Red Wings starter Josiah Gray managed to get out of the inning without any further damage but that would spell the end of his day. The Nationals 2023 National League All-Star representative was making his second rehab start but was unable to follow his success on Tuesday. He posted six innings of one-run baseball on Tuesday’s win. Sunday he allowed seven earned runs on six hits including the two three-run blasts.
Despite Gray digging them a deep hole the Red Wings continued to chip away. After Indianapolis tacked on another to extend the lead in the fourth the Red Wings answered in the bottom half. After a Juan Yepez base hit Trey Lipscomb lined an RBI double into the left field corner to make it an 8-5 game. Then, it was Cluff again in the sixth getting a fortunate break on a fly ball to right field that was misjudged by Ji Hwan Bae, resulting in an RBI triple. Finally, in the seventh, the wheels came off for the Indians.
Dylan Crews led off the inning with a single followed by Adams working a one-out walk. Travis Blankenhorn was then plunked to load the bases for Carter Kieboom to line a two-run single to tie the game. After the bases were loaded once again Cluff stepped to the plate against Indianapolis pitcher Ryder Ryan with a chance to give the Red Wings the lead.
“Fortunately I saw Ryder earlier in the week so I had a pretty good idea how he was going to attack me,” Cluff said. “I was just trying to look for a fastball because I was going to make him locate his offspeed and he wasn’t locating at that time.”
Four pitches later Ryan walked in the go-ahead run to complete the Red Wings comeback. Rochester was able to tack on three more in the eighth to put the game out of reach for good. The Rochester bats were aided by a strong bullpen effort in relief of Gray.
After Joe La Sorsa gave up a run in the fourth he combined with Eduardo Salazar, Joan Adon and Rico Garcia to shutout Indianapolis from the fifth inning to the conclusion.
“The thing you worry about when you lose your starter pretty early is how you’re gonna cover and then you start thinking about the next couple of days cause we’re done,” Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy said. “But, our bullpen did a nice job keeping the game where it was.”
The Red Wings cap off their first series of the second half winning five of six and having won seven of eight dating back to the end of the last series against Syracuse. They currently sit atop the International League standings.
“A lot of good things this series but to me this was a must-win for us to carry the momentum into Buffalo,” LeCroy said “Hopefully we can all continue to play together. The group man they pull for each other and they hold each other accountable and it has really been fun to watch.”
Rochester will join all of the International League in a split series next week beginning on Monday. The Red Wings will head to Buffalo to take on the Bisons for three before returning home for three games as the league works around the Fourth of July holiday this week. Brad Lord (1-0, 3.60) is slated to make his second Triple-A start for the Red Wings while Buffalo is expected to work a bullpen game with the opener yet to be determined. The first pitch from Sahlen Field is set for 6:35 p.m.
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