BY DAN GLICKMAN
The Rochester Red Wings have been bouncing up and down over the .500 record line for most of the season, and they returned to an equal number of wins and losses (19-19) on Saturday with a 7-4 win at the Syracuse Mets.
The Wings were paced by a quality start of six innings by right-hander Chandler Champlain, who held the Mets to three hits and two earned runs without a walk en route to his third victory of the season.
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Offensively, Rochester was powered by three home runs: a two-run shot by Yohandy Morales (his sixth of the season) in the third, and a pair of solo shots by Trey Lipscomb (his fifth) and Harry Ford (his first as a Red Wing) in the seventh.
Dylan Crews opened scoring in the first with an RBI double against 24-year-old lefty Zach Thornton, who was making his AAA debut. Morales’ two-run home run extended the lead to 3-0 in the third. Although Syracuse began a comeback starting in the fifth with an RBI single by Yonny Hernandez, and cut the Red Wings’ lead to one with a solo shot by former Red Wing Jackson Cluff in the sixth, but Lipscomb and Ford’s home runs in the seventh moved the Wings lead up to 5-2, a lead they’d never give up.
Two more insurance runs scored on an error in the top of the ninth, allowing the Wings some wiggle-room Syracuse’s Christian Arroyo homered in the ninth to make it 7-4.
The Red Wings’ win on Saturday ensures that the worst they can have in their six-game series with Syracuse is a 3-3 split. They’ll go for a 4-2 series win on Sunday with Riley Cornelio on the mound at 1:05 p.m.
Chandler Champlain is a guy who seems to have benefited mightily from a change of scenery. His being released by Kansas City at the close of spring training might be the best thing that has happened to him in his young career. He looks confident on the mound, has shown he can throw strikes, and maintains his concentration even when he does not have his best stuff.