Salt Lake Powers Past El Paso to Push Win Streak to Six
The Salt Lake Bees ran their winning streak to six games with another victory over the El Paso Chihuahuas on Wednesday evening, riding another excellent offensive performance to take things home by a final score of 9-5. The Bees entered play on Wednesday ranked near the top of the PCL
The Salt Lake Bees ran their winning streak to six games with another victory over the El Paso Chihuahuas on Wednesday evening, riding another excellent offensive performance to take things home by a final score of 9-5.
The Bees entered play on Wednesday ranked near the top of the PCL leaderboards in a number of different offensive categories since the start of July, and they showed why during their contest against the Chihuahuas, hanging another nine runs on the board to give themselves a large cushion all night long. The team started off the scoring just two batters into the game on an RBI single by Michael Stefanic, and in the next inning, they pushed across three more on singles by Cole Tucker and Jason Martin to take an early 4-0 lead. The knockout blow for the Bees would come in the fifth after El Paso pulled to within one, as after they loaded the bases on three infield singles, Charles Leblanc brought them all home with his first grand slam of the season to bring the score all the way up to 8-3. To cap things off one inning later, Tucker continued his great day with another RBI knock to bring home the ninth and final run for Salt Lake.
GRAND SLAM CHARLES LEBLANC! 👑 pic.twitter.com/U970eSwyRP
— Salt Lake Bees (@SaltLakeBees) July 25, 2024
This scoring binge helped to support Salt Lake starter Reid Detmers, who was able to work around one rough inning to finish his day with a solid performance. The lefty allowed three runs (one earned) in the third inning on a pair of home runs given up to José Azocar and Eguy Rosario, but outside of that frame, he retired 12 of the 15 hitters he faced while punching out five Chihuahuas hitters and walking two. Behind him, the Bees got a nice effort from the bullpen, starting with a scoreless sixth inning with two strikeouts from Adam Kolarek. The seventh and the eighth belonged to Ryan Miller, who kept El Paso off the board completely while surrendering just a lone hit, and Tyler Thomas finished things off on the mound in the ninth to lock down the win.
On the individual side of things at the plate, Salt Lake was led by Tucker and Stefanic, who combined to go 6-for-10 with three RBI and three runs scored at the top of the order. Leblanc paced the team in the RBI column with his four from the grand slam, and Martin joined him and Tucker as hitters with multiple runs driven in in. As for the team, the win marked the first time that the Bees have won at least six games in a row at any point since April 15-22, 2017, when they managed to rattle off eight consecutive victories.
Have a day, CoTuck!
— Salt Lake Bees (@SaltLakeBees) July 25, 2024
Cole Tucker's third hit of the game brings home another run and increases our lead to six 🙌 pic.twitter.com/H77ovnuEdL
The Bees will now try to keep the win streak rolling against the Chihuahuas in the third game of the series on Thursday, with two-time All Star Johnny Cueto set to make his first start in Salt Lake at 6:35 p.m.