Salt Lake Goes Cold in Fourth Straight Defeat in El Paso

The Salt Lake Bees came up short against the El Paso Chihuahuas for the fourth game in a row on Saturday, falling victim to a lack of offense and taking the loss by a final score of 6-1.

After struggling at the plate for the majority of Friday’s contest, the Bees once again failed to get anything going on offense on Saturday, notching just three hits and five total baserunners through the first seven innings of the game against El Paso pitching. The bulk of this time on the mound was covered by Chihuahuas starter Randy Vásquez, who completed six scoreless innings while surrendering just a pair of hits and walks and striking out eight Salt Lake hitters in what was one of the righty’s best outings of the season. The only real threat that the Bees managed to bring forth on the night came in the eighth inning after Vásquez had already left the game, when Zach Humphreys doubled and Landon Wallace singled to put runners on the corners with one out. Elliot Soto did manage to score Humphreys on a fielder’s choice as the next batter to get Salt Lake on the board, but with a chance to extend things even further, Kyren Paris ripped a liner into the glove of third baseman Jose Sanabria to cut the rally down in its tracks.

On the other side, the Chihuahuas did not have the same troubles in the box that the Bees did, with the home team tallying runs in four different innings to slowly build up a comfortable lead. The scoring for El Paso started in the second on a two-out RBI single from Cal Mitchell off of Salt Lake starter Travis MacGregor, and it continued one frame later on a line drive off the back of MacGregor with a runner on third by Tirso Ornelas. The big breakthrough for the Chihuhuas came in the fourth against reliever Luis Ledo, with the team scoring three times on a Mitchell sacrifice fly, a Kevin Plawecki base hit and a Clay Dungan fielder’s choice. To cap things off, Mitchell struck for his second hit and third RBI of the night in the sixth against Adam Cimber to bring El Paso’s run total on the day up to six, which would prove to be more than enough to take home the victory.

The Bees will now try to salvage a win over the Chihuahuas in the series finale on Sunday afternoon, with Victor Mederos set to make the start in Salt Lake’s final road game of the season against knuckleballer Matt Waldron for first pitch at 12:05 p.m.