Salt Lake Suffers Biggest Loss of Season on Wednesday Against OKC

The Salt Lake Bees took home their biggest loss of the 2024 season on Wednesday night, dropping the second game of their series against the Oklahoma City Baseball Club by a final score of 20-6.

One night after the Bees hung a nine-run inning on the board in their win on Tuesday, Oklahoma City tried their best to match that on multiple occasions on Wednesday, tallying seven runs in the opening frame and six in the sixth in what were the highest and third-highest single inning scoring outbursts against Salt Lake this season. The first of these explosions came off of Bees starter Houston Harding, who was chased from the game after just 0.2 innings after allowing a two-RBI double to James Outman, a run-scoring error on a ground ball off the bat of Alan Trejo that third baseman Shane Matheny bobbled, and a three-run home run to Alex Freeland that made it 6-0 in favor of the visitors. One more run came across in the inning on a Drew Avans single, and after OKC made it a 9-0 game in the third on an Andre Lipcius two-RBI knock, the floodgates opened up for the second outburst that came in the form of a quartet of home runs. Reliever Luis Ledo surrendered three of these longballs, getting tagged for a two-run homer by Ryan Ward, a solo shot by Trejo and a three-run bomb by Avans, and the final one came from Outman on the first pitch against new pitcher Adam Cimber.

To make matters worse, the Bees had all sorts of trouble at the plate on the night against reliever Jon Duplantier, who took the ball for his sixth start with Oklahoma City and made it without a doubt his best performance of the season. Duplantier did not allow a baserunner over his six innings of work, sitting down all 18 hitters he faced on 80 pitches while punching out 12 Salt Lake hitters, tied for the most against the Bees by any pitcher all year. After the righty was pulled, the Bees finally broke through for something on offense, notching their first runner of the day on a Kyren Paris walk with one out in the seventh and then picking up their first hit and runs at the same time on a Shane Matheny two-RBI single four batters later. Salt Lake did manage to bring home four more runs after this in the final frame, which brought the score up to its final mark of 20-6.

The Bees will now try to rebound from the tough loss and take the lead in the series in the third game on Thursday evening, with Brett Kerry currently set to take the ball in his first start back with Salt Lake against Oklahoma City’s Jordan Lyles for first pitch at 6:35 p.m.