Lucchesi shines as Syracuse beats St. Paul, 8-3, on Saturday night

St. Paul, MN – The Syracuse Mets were a baseball team on a mission on Saturday night, pairing hot hitting with strong pitching en route to an 8-3 win at the St. Paul Saints (Triple-A Minnesota Twins) on a sunny, weekend night at CHS Field. The Mets have now won the last three games in the series after dropping the first two, with the series conclusion coming on Sunday afternoon. This is the first meeting between St. Paul and Syracuse.

After Randy Dobnak started the game with three perfect innings for St. Paul (27-34), his night was ruined by Syracuse (37-24) in the top of the fourth. The Mets chased Dobnak from the game with a fateful fourth, scoring five times on seven hits plus an error. Syracuse sent 11 men to the plate in their five-run explosion of a fourth inning, highlighted by a three-run homer from Trayce Thompson that completed the scoring in the frame for a 5-0 Mets lead. Thompson leads the team with 15 home runs this season. Rylan Bannon also had chipped in a two-run single earlier in the inning.

The Mets added on in the fifth on a two-out double from Mike Brosseau that plated Thompson, who had doubled earlier in the inning, as Syracuse took a 6-0 advantage. Brosseau is working on quite the week. In four games, Brosseau has eight hits and five runs driven in. The former Oakland Golden Grizzly is now remarkably batting .350 in 29 games with Syracuse since joining the team at the beginning of May.

Syracuse wasn’t done scoring as the Mets added runs seven and eight on the evening with back-to-back homers from Pablo Reyes and Rylan Bannon in the seventh. Reyes now has three home runs in eight games since joining the Mets at the end of May, while Bannon finished Saturday’s game 2-for-5 with two runs scored and three runs driven in.

Those eight runs would be plenty for the Mets pitching staff who turned in a quality combined night of work. Joey Lucchesi got the evening off to a sterling start, allowing just two runs on four hits in six and two-thirds innings with three walks and five strikeouts. It was a season-high in innings pitched for Lucchesi, who celebrated his 31st birthday on Thursday.

Max Kranick and Grant Hartwig finished the game from there, surrendering only one run in the last two and one-third innings with two strikeouts. Hartwig pitched a scoreless ninth, continuing an excellent season at the Triple-A level. The Michigan native’s ERA is 2.45 in 19 appearances with Syracuse this season, fanning 22 batters in 22 total innings of work.

Syracuse wraps up its first-ever series against the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, the St. Paul Saints, on Sunday afternoon. Game six of the six-game series is scheduled for a 3:07 E.T first pitch from CHS Field.