Bandits Rally Late to Steal Extra-Inning Victory

South Bend, Indiana – The Quad Cities River Bandits trailed by a pair of runs going into the ninth inning on Saturday night, but outscored the South Bend Cubs 5-2 over the final two innings to swipe an 8-7 10-inning win at Four Winds Field.

The Cubs opened the scoring in the second, taking a 1-0 lead against Bandits’ starter Henry Williams on a Brian Kalmer sac-fly. Quad Cities would immediately respond against Jaxon Wiggins in the third though and jumped in front 3-1 thanks to a wild pitch and RBI-singles off the bats of Jack Pineda and Jared Dickey.

In the fourth, South Bend struck for a three-run frame of its own and retook the lead 4-3 on another Kalmer RBI (single) and Jordan Nwogu’s two-run triple.

Williams finished the night with a scoreless fifth inning, but Nwogu would strike again against Ryan Ramsey in the sixth, extending the Cubs’ advantage to 5-3 on an RBI-single.

While Ramsey and Chazz Martinez would combine to keep South Bend off the board for the seventh and eighth innings, Quad Cities bats failed to cut into the deficit against the trio of Ben Leeper, Nick Hull, and Mitchell Tyranski.

Down to their final three outs, the Bandits finally broke through against Cubs’ closer Yovanny Cabrera. Spencer Nivens sparked the comeback with an RBI-triple, before Chris Brito officially tied the game 5-5 with a sacrifice-fly.

South Bend threatened to nullify the rally in the bottom half, loading the bases against Ben Sears to bring the winning run 90 feet away, but the right-hander would get Parker Chavers to pop up and extend the game.

Quad Cities wasted no time reigniting the bats in the tenth, taking advantage of a Jack Patterson wild pitch and scoring the placed runner, Omar Hernandez, on Pineda’s sac-fly. Three batters later, after a Dustin Dickerson single, a hit batsman, and an error, Carson Roccaforte and Nivens put the Bandits up 8-5 with a pair of RBI-singles.

Sears returned to the hill for the bottom of the tenth and again saw the Cubs rally. After Nwogu drove in his third run of the game on a fielder’s choice, Wally Soto—who had entered as a pinch runner in the ninth inning—made it a one-run QC lead with an RBI-single, but Sears would strand the game-tying run at third, getting Brett Bateman to ground out and end the game.

Despite allowing two runs (one earned), the effort earned Sears (1-3) his first win of the season, while Patterson (0-2) allowed three runs (one earned) in his 1.0-inning night for the loss. Cabrera (2) was charged with his second blown save of the season.

Quad Cities will look to win the three-game series in Sunday afternoon’s rubber match and sends Ethan Bosacker (0-1, 1.69) to the mound opposite South Bends’ Grant Kipp (0-1, 6.00). First pitch is set for 2:05 p.m. ET at Four Winds Field.