Grizzlies smash 6 home runs in 9-5 win at El Paso

At the University of North Carolina, Fresno Grizzlies third baseman Colin Moran (2013) and starting pitcher Trent Thornton (2015) were teammates for a season and drafted just two years apart. It was quite the reunion for the Tar Heel baseball program at Southwest University Park in El Paso Saturday night, as the duo hit two homers and tossed six shutout innings respectively. Fresno (30-33) hung on for a 9-5 victory over the Chihuahuas (30-33), and Tyler White, who played at Western Carolina University, hit two home runs as well. 
White (3-for-5, 3 RBI) set the tone early as the second batter of the game, drilling his sixth homer of the season to left field for a 1-0 Fresno lead. Over a five-game hit streak, White is 11 for his last 22 with three home runs, three doubles and eight RBI. The lead grew to 3-0 an inning later, once three of the first six Fresno batters drilled a solo shot. Moran (2-for-4, 3 RBI) and A.J. Reed (2-for-4) each went yard to the same spot on the batter's eye in centerfield, the third time this season the Grizzlies have hit back-to-back homers.  
For both Reed and Moran, it was their 10th homer of the season, and later in the game Moran's 11^th would pass his total last year in 117 games with Fresno and set a new career-high. Reed has homered in consecutive games. With six Saturday swats, the Grizzlies have hit 80 home runs on the season, second in the PCL and Triple-A only to the Nashville Sounds (81). Max Stassi drilled number 78 to lead off the fourth, his fifth of the season, and like Reed, his second of the road trip. Like Moran and Reed before him, it was also off the batter's eye.  
White and Alejandro Garcia stayed red hot, adding to the lead in the fourth. Garcia's RBI double scored Reid Brignac (2-for-4) who reached on an error, and Garcia later scored on White's lined single to center, for a 6-0 Grizz lead. Since returning to the Grizzlies from Double-A Corpus Christi, Garcia has hit safely in five of six games, and is 9-for-19 with three doubles and eight runs scored.
Chihuahua's starter Matt Magill (3-4) would only last four innings, surrendering four homers and seven hits total, allowing six runs (four earned). He struck out six and walked two. 
Once Derek Fisher led off the fifth with a double, Moran promptly drilled his second homer of the night to right field, to give the Grizzlies their first five-homer game of the season, pushing aside the four they hit May 28 vs. Albuquerque in a 7-0 win. Moran's two-homer game was the second this season for Fresno, as he and White would joined Preston Tucker who hit a pair of longballs in the 8-2 win over Albuquerque on May 30. The Grizzlies also had one five-homer game last season, a 23-3 win at Salt Lake on June 30- Tucker hit three homers in that one.  
With a double in the sixth, Tucker extended his hit streak to seven games, the current Fresno club-high. Prior to, White led the inning with his second homer of the night, his seventh of 2017 and the sixth of the evening for the Grizz to make it 9-0. White's blast to center made it five solo shots of the six that left the yard for the Grizzlies, as he achieved the club's third two-homer game.
Thornton allowed just four hits in his six shutout innings, and did not walk a batter. The third-year pro struck out four in his finest Triple-A start to date.  
El Paso's Jabari Blash broke up the shutout in the seventh with a solo homer, as the seven combined home runs by the clubs was also a Fresno season-high, by two. It sparked a five-run seventh for the Chihuahuas before the Grizz bullpen settled things down for a 9-5 final, as Jordan Jankowski worked a perfect bottom of the ninth with a strikeout. 
The rubber match of this three-game set will be Sunday at 5:05 Pacific Time. Probable starters are RHP Mike Hauschild (2-1, 5.34) for Fresno against RHP Matt Magill (3-3, 3.79) for El Paso.