Bees Ride Nine-Run Sixth to Blowout Win Over Oklahoma City
The Salt Lake Bees began their final series at Smith’s Ballpark with a bang on Tuesday night, taking down the Oklahoma City Baseball Club by a final score of 11-1 behind the strength of a nine-run offensive explosion in the sixth inning. Contrary to what the final score would indicate,
The Salt Lake Bees began their final series at Smith’s Ballpark with a bang on Tuesday night, taking down the Oklahoma City Baseball Club by a final score of 11-1 behind the strength of a nine-run offensive explosion in the sixth inning.
Contrary to what the final score would indicate, Friday’s contest was a close affair throughout the first half of the night, with Salt Lake coming into the sixth holding a slim 2-1 lead. By the time the frame had finished, however, the Bees had blown things all the way open, tallying nine runs in what went down as their highest single inning scoring performance all season. The frame started normally enough, with the Bees placing two runners on base sandwiched between two outs, but with their chance to put together their first breakthrough of the day at the plate, they did not miss. The rally started with a Shane Matheny double to the wall in left center to plate both of the runners already on, and one batter later, Landon Wallace followed that up with a double of his own off the right field wall to bring Matheny home and make it a 5-1 game. Things kept snowballing from here, as Caleb Ketchup came up two batters later and picked up a pair of RBIs of his own to bring the lead up to six. After a Kyren Paris walk, the Bees put the cherry on top of the inning via a trio of hits, with an RBI single by Willie Calhoun, a run-scoring base hit by Chad Wallach and a two-RBI double from Tucker Flint for his second two-bagger of the inning bringing the score up to its final tally of 11-1.
🚨 9 RUN INNING ALERT 🚨
— Salt Lake Bees (@SaltLakeBees) September 18, 2024
Willie Calhoun 1B -> Chad Wallach 1B -> Tucker Flint 2B = Our highest-scoring inning all season! pic.twitter.com/lwOWpWYBHN
In total, the Bees had eight of the nine hitters in their starting lineup reach base in Friday’s game, and six of the nine got in the hit column at least once. The team also got multi-hit and multi-RBI performances from three different players throughout the night, with those coming courtesy of Ketchup, Flint and Matheny. To make things even better, Salt Lake also got very solid performances from everyone that took the mound, beginning with starter Davis Daniel, who tossed six innings of one run-ball while allowing five hits and striking out seven against just two walks. After Daniel was done, the bullpen locked things down without incident, with Michael Darrell-Hicks working two scoreless frames and John O’Reilly finishing things off in the ninth without allowing a run.
The Bees will now try to keep things rolling in the second game of the series against Oklahoma City on Wednesday evening, with Houston Harding set to make the start in his return to Salt Lake against OKC’s Jon Duplantier for first pitch at 6:35 p.m.