Bees Open Up Road Trip With Loss in Tacoma 

The Salt Lake Bees dropped the first game of their road trip against the Tacoma Rainiers on Tuesday evening, failing to carry over the momentum from their last series in what ended up as an 8-5 loss.

The Bees offense had trouble figuring out Tacoma starting pitcher Emerson Hancock, who was making his first start of the season for the Rainiers after spending the first portion of the season in the Mariners rotation. The team was able to get traffic aboard against the former No. 6 overall pick in the form of four hits and four walks, but their undoing was not being able to take advantage, as Hancock was able to escape both a bases-loaded, no out jam in the first inning and a second-and-third, one out situation in the third to finish his day with six scoreless innings. Salt Lake did manage to push across a pair of runs in the seventh via an RBI triple by Jordyn Adams and a run-scoring groundout from Jason Martin against former Bee Ty Buttrey and three in the ninth on Charles Leblanc’s fifth homer of the year, but the late outburst proved to be too little, too late.

Zach Plesac took the mound to start things off on the other side for the Bees, where he was undone by one unfortunate inning. The righty was chased from the game with two outs in the fifth after surrendering three of his four runs in the frame, getting tagged for a solo home run by Blake Hunt and back-to-back RBI singles by Ryan Bliss and Cade Marlowe. Ryan Miller followed Plesac by punching out four batters in a very impressive 1.2 innings of work, but upon his departure, the Rainiers put their foot on the gas once again by scoring a pair of runs off of Kenyon Yovan and Tyler Thomas.

The Bees will now try to bounce back in the second game of the series against Tacoma on Wednesday night, with Davis Daniel scheduled to take the ball for a 7:05 p.m. start.