Despite recent surge, the Emeralds still have quite a bit of work to do

Two months ago, the Emeralds and Tri-City Dust Devils looked like two franchises headed in somewhat different directions.

In May, a surging Dust Devils team came to PK Park, won five of six games in the series in dominant fashion and jumped its division rival in the Northwest league — marking the clear nadir of the Emeralds’ topsy-turvy start to 2024.

A month and a half later, the clubs are seemingly headed in opposite directions. Only now it’s the Emeralds cruising ahead of their fellow foes, and the Dust Devils, in danger of suffering through yet another wasted year in the shadow of their PNW counterparts.

Just not Saturday night, sometimes luck won’t be on the Emerald's side. Sometimes, baseball just happens. The Emeralds' 5-3 loss to the Dust Devils on Tuesday at PK Park served as the latest example.

The Emeralds have largely outplayed Tri-City through the first five games of the series. Save Saturday’s topsy-turvy game which was decided in the ninth inning with Tri-City scoring twice, the Emeralds have dominated most games from start to finish. But what has been coined as a baseball staple — each team losing a third of its games, each team winning a third of its games, and the last third being what decides the great teams and the mediocre teams — showed just how far Eugene still has to go.

Vancouver, bidding for the second Northwest league playoff spot, tied a franchise record with its eighth-straight win.

Perhaps this isn’t the greatest time to write such a thing — Eugene faltered down the stretch Saturday night with reliever Trent Harris struggling mightily — but rarely in this series’ recent history has one club’s stock been so up, while the other’s has been so dreadfully down.

Tri-City has now won six times in its last 32 games. But for one night, baseball ran its course. Eugene’s biggest chance for a rally — one-out runners on the corners situation for Bryce Eldridge — came up short with the Giants’ No. 3 ranked prospect hitting a long fly-ball on a center-cut fastball to right that just fell flat at the warning track.

And in the ninth, all chances of the team’s comeback seemed to ride on Eldridge’s shoulders.

“We need him to get on base, then him to get on base then, him to get on base to bring Bryce up,” Game Director Kyrstin Ginter and most of the stadium said.

But ultimately, one of those guys, Jonah Cox, lined to right, one more reason the Ems still have so much work to do.

"It was bound to end at some point," Ginter — the starter of the streak said.