Dickey’s Late Blast Lifts Quad Cities Over Great Lakes

Midland, Michigan – Jared Dickey’s go-ahead eighth-inning home run helped propel the Quad Cities River Bandits to their second-straight win, as they defeated the Great Lakes Loons 4-2 on Wednesday night at Dow Diamond.

Aside from Dickey’s home run, all the game’s offense took place in the third inning. While Quad Cities landed the opening blow against Jonathan Edwards, taking a 1-0 lead on Brett Squires’ sacrifice-fly, Great Lakes immediately responded in the bottom of the frame and used Thayron Liranzo’s RBI single and an RBI fielder’s choice off the bat of Dylan Campbell to move ahead 2-1.

Those tallies would be the only surrendered by River Bandits’ starter Steven Zobac, who matched his shortest start of the season with a 4.0-inning performance, but struck out a career-high eight Loons hitters before departing.

Chazz Martinez (2.0 IP, 0 R, 3 SO) and Chase Isbell (1.0 IP, 0 R, 1 SO) picked up right where the right-hander left off and kept Great Lakes off the board through the seventh.

Although the Bandits’ sixth-inning rally came up short against Jose Rodriguez, with the scheduled piggyback of Christian Romero tossing 4.1-scoreless innings out of the Loons bullpen, Quad Cities broke through in the eighth against Franklin De La Paz. With two outs and two men on, Dickey smashed his first home run in over a month over the right-field fence to bring the Bandits from down one, to up 4-2.

Ben Sears then locked down the Loons for the final two innings en route to his team-leading seventh save of the season.

Isbell (1-0) earned his first-career High-A win in the effort, while De La Paz (1-1) blew his first save of the summer and took the loss, allowing the homer as part of a 1.1-inning relief outing.

Quad Cities will look to guarantee itself a split of its six-game series against Great Lakes tomorrow night, as Hunter Owen (5-2, 3.52) is scheduled to start opposite Peter Huebeck (2-3, 2.77). First pitch at Dow Diamond is set for 7:05 p.m. ET.