Dust Devils Dig In, Hold On to Beat Canadians

At a place recently inhospitable to Tri-City Dust Devils (12-20 2H) victories the visitors grabbed the lead and held off another late charge from the Vancouver Canadians (19-13 2H) Wednesday night, taking a 5-4 win at Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium and bringing this week’s series all square at a game apiece.

The bulk of Tri-City’s scoring came in the top of the 3^rd inning, after Vancouver starter Juaron Watts-Brown (0-3) set down the first six Dust Devils in order. CF Caleb Ketchup drew a leadoff walk and stole his NWL-best 41^st base of the year to get to second. 3B Arol Vera drew a walk behind Ketchup and 2B Mac McCroskey grounded an infield single down the third base line to load the bases with no one out and bring up LF Joe Redfield.

Watts-Brown induced Redfield to ground a ball down the first base line, where Canadians 1B Peyton Williams grabbed it and threw home to force Ketchup out at the plate. The bases remained loaded, though, and a patient Tri-City team watched as Watts-Brown issued RBI walks to SS Adrian Placencia and 1B Sonny DiChiara to take a 2-1 lead. C Juan Flores then capped the inning with a two-out single up the middle that scored both Redfield and Placencia for a 4-1 lead.

Vancouver had a partial answer in their half of the 3^rd with Williams, who had doubled in the first run of the game for the home side, continuing the inning by drawing a two-out walk. RF Jace Bohrofen followed by getting hit by a pitch, pushing Williams to second, and SS Nick Goodwin singled him in to cut the Dust Devils lead to 4-2. Another walk loaded the bases, but starter Chris Clark (3-10) struck out C Jacob Sharp to leave them full.

Clark fought through control issues again in the 4^th, loading the bases up a second time and allowing an RBI groundout by Williams. He had an extra run of buffer, though, due to Arol Vera crushing a line drive home run over the double wall in right-center in the top of the frame. The longball by Vera, who homered only once in 76 games for Double-A Rocket City before returning to Tri-City, made it so Williams’ second RBI made it 5-3 through four innings of play.

The Dust Devils starter got through five innings and handed the game off to the bullpen. Righty Christian Young, a native of Oakville, Ontario, debuted at the High-A level in his home and native land of Canada, going two-thirds of an inning with a strikeout. Lefty Dylan Phillips took over and, while giving up a run in the 7^th, finished the 6^th inning with help from Juan Flores. The 18-year-old catcher displayed his cannon arm by picking Canadians 2B Jeff Wehler off of second to end a scoring threat.

Reliever Roman Phansalkar got the final out of the 7^th to preserve the lead and the first out of the 8^th. Closer Luke Murphy then entered and took care of business, allowing a two-out hit to Nick Goodwin in the 9^th but inducing a groundout from 3B Cutter Coffey to end the game and collect his sixth save in as many tries.

Game three of the week’s series north of the border gets another 7:05 p.m. start Thursday night at Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium. Right-hander Ryan Costeiu (0-3, 2.32 ERA) takes the mound for Tri-City, countered by lefty Connor O’Halloran (1-5, 7.71 ERA) for Vancouver.

Broadcast coverage of the game begins with the pregame show at 6:45 p.m. Thursday night both here and on the MiLB app.

Tri-City returns from Vancouver to host the Spokane Indians for a six-game set beginning Tuesday, August 6, at Gesa Stadium. Tickets for the Spokane series are on sale now with special ticket rates available for groups of 20 or more. For more information on Dust Devils single game, season, mini-plan (11, 22, 33) and group tickets, visit the team’s official ticketing site, dustdevilsbaseball.com.