WooSox hammer more homers to down RailRiders again
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Aug. 14—MOOSIC — Worcester hammered a couple more pitches over the wall, again claiming an early lead against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
While the Red Sox weren't able to pull away quite as much as they did Friday, they did enough to hold off the RailRiders.
Ronaldo Hernández drilled a three-run homer, Connor Wong went deep two batters later and Worcester worked two big, bases-loaded walks to edge the RailRiders, 7-6, at PNC Field on Saturday.
The RailRiders (57-52) suffered back-to-back losses at home for the first time since June 16-17, and were out-homered by Worcester, 7-1, over the last two days. RailRiders pitchers struck out 16 on Saturday, but they also walked eight, including two in the sixth from Ron Marinaccio, who inherited a two-out, bases-loaded jam.
"I think we made a couple mistakes early, and when we have, they've hit them and they're hitting them over the fence," RailRiders manager Doug Davis said. "Three-run home runs are hard. But our guys fight and they're working their way back into games. No, I think tonight it was more the walks ended up being what was the end result of this game. We just gave them too many free passes and didn't really force them to do a whole lot to score a couple runs. I think, in the end, that was probably the glaring thing from our standpoint."
With the game tied at 5, SWB reliever Carlos Espinal let up a walk and a single with one out, then walked Franchy Cordero, who was 0 for 3 with three strikeouts up to that point, to load the bases with two down. Marinaccio walked the first batter he faced, Abraham Almonte, on four pitches to give Worcester the lead, then lost Enmanuel Valdez on six pitches.
"Ron had really good stuff tonight," Davis said. "Velocity was good. Slider was very good. He just, coming into that game, had a hard time finding the strike zone. I don't think there's any key issue with that."
The RailRiders got one run back in the seventh after Oswald Peraza singled, stole second and scored on Ben Rortvedt's double, but they couldn't get Rortvedt home from third with two outs. They had the leadoff man on in the ninth after Estevan Florial walked, but Worcester reliever Zack Kelly retired the next three in order.
"They came up with the big hits," said RailRiders catcher Rob Brantly, who went 2 for 4 with a pair of doubles and two RBIs. "Peraza had a big one today. We were chipping away at this game and we were another big hit away from being right back in it. We didn't get that big hit today, but our at-bats have been consistent."
They kept themselves in it early. Hernández and Wong's home runs opened a 5-1 lead in the top of the third, but the RailRiders answered with two in the bottom of the inning when Peraza launched his 16th home run of the year and Brantly doubled in a run with two outs to cut it to 5-3. They tied it in the fifth, when Brantly and Armando Alvarez drove in runs with back-to-back doubles.
Reliever Jimmy Cordero bought the RailRiders some time, facing nine batters over the seventh, eighth and ninth, and fanning five of them. But Worcester was able to hold on, with starter Connor Seabold and relievers AJ Politi and Kelly combining to punch out 14 while walking just two.
"You catch a team when they're swinging the bat well, it's like how to you mitigate good contact?" Brantly said. "Like I said, that's just as much as it is on the catcher as it is on the pitcher. So, we do our best to execute the pitches as best we can to the pitcher's strengths where he gets weak contact. We just didn't execute as good as we wanted the last couple days, but our pitching has been a staple for us all season long."
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