Salt Lake Taken Down by Oklahoma City in Penultimate Game of 2024 Season

The Salt Lake Bees were taken down in the penultimate game of the 2024 season on Saturday evening, falling to the Oklahoma City Baseball Club for the third time this week by a final score of 13-2.

Fresh off a tough defeat at the hands of the Bees on Friday, Oklahoma City found its power stroke in Saturday’s game, with the unfortunate victim being Salt Lake starter John O’Reilly. OKC first struck for a pair of home runs in the game’s opening frame, the first coming in the form of a two-run shot off the bat of Dalton Rushing just two batters in and the next coming as a solo shot from Ryan Ward two batters later. After plating four more runs in the second to increase their lead to seven, the visitors doubled up on the longballs again in the third, with Chris Okey tagging a solo shot against his former team and then Rushing hammering one 461 feet over the berm in right field for his second of the night. After this, Ward took O’Reilly deep again for his second of the game in the fourth, and to cap things off, James Outman joined the party in the eighth with a solo shot off of reliever Ivan Armstrong for OKC’s sixth and final dinger of the night.

While Oklahoma City’s power surge was ongoing, the Bees did not have the same luck on offense, getting held scoreless through the first six innings of the game before finally breaking through in the seventh for a pair of runs on a double into the left field corner by Caleb Ketchup and a bases-loaded walk drawn by Tucker Flint. This would be it for the scoring, though, as Salt Lake could not get another rally started over the final two frames and was held to a pair of zeroes to wrap things up. The Bees were not without their opportunities to score throughout the night, but their undoing was their struggles in key situations, as they left 11 runners on base and stranded the bases loaded without scoring in both the fourth and fifth innings.

The Bees will now play their final game at Smith’s Ballpark in the finale of the 2024 season on Sunday afternoon, with Davis Daniel getting the special assignment on the mound for Salt Lake against Oklahoma City’s Hyun-il Choi for first pitch at 1:05 p.m.