{"id":161402,"date":"2026-04-09T13:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T13:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/161402\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T13:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T13:20:08","slug":"railriders-rally-to-win-home-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/161402\/","title":{"rendered":"RailRiders rally to win home opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders had to wait an extra day to celebrate their home opener at PNC Field after Tuesday\u2019s game was postponed.<\/p>\n<p>When the club finally got the chance to take the field in front of their hometown fans, there certainly was no shortage of fireworks.<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders rallied from six runs down to take the lead in the bottom of the eighth, and held on for a 7-6 victory over the Durham Bulls on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Oswaldo Cabrera\u2019s sacrifice fly brought home Duke Ellis to score and capped off a wild rally for the RailRiders, who trailed as much as 6-0 in the middle innings of the game before embarking on a big comeback down the stretch.<\/p>\n<p>Kervin Castro, the fifth pitcher of the evening for Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre, earned the save with a scoreless top of the ninth inning. Castro worked around a one-out single from Victor Mesa Jr., getting the next two outs to preserve the win and put a capper on a wild home opener for the RailRiders.<\/p>\n<p>Durham took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning, with Dom Keegan tripling in a run and scoring himself on a sacrifice fly from Jacob Melton.<\/p>\n<p>The Bulls would continue to pad their lead from there, adding three runs in the top of the fifth and one more in the top of the sixth inning.<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders trailed 6-0 heading to the home half of the sixth, but that\u2019s when the offense began to wake up at PNC Field.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s first run of the evening was scored on a wild pitch that brought Spencer Jones dashing home to score. Paul DeJong made it 6-2 with a double into left field, scoring Seth Brown.<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders cut the lead to 6-4 in the very next inning, again with Durham helping out a little: another wild pitch brought Jasson Dominguez home to score, and a sac fly from Yanquiel Fernandez plated another run.<\/p>\n<p>In the bottom of the eighth, Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre finished the job at the plate: three more runs came across to flip a six-run deficit into a one-run lead.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the RailRiders were fortunate to benefit from some Durham miscues: the first two of Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre\u2019s three runs in the eighth inning, including the tying run, were scored on balks called on Bulls reliever Luis Guerrero.<\/p>\n<p>The second balk also moved Ellis over to third base after he was called on to pinch-run for Payton Henry; from there, Ellis was able to put the RailRiders ahead 7-6 after Cabrera lofted a fly ball out to left field.<\/p>\n<p>Danny Watson earned the win for the RailRiders, his first of the young season, with a scoreless inning of relief in the eighth.<\/p>\n<p>Bradley Hanner pitched the sixth and seventh innings and was instrumental in slowing Durham down, allowing just one run on one hit and two walks.<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders\u2019 offense only amassed five hits and three RBI on the night. Jones had a hit and drew three walks against Durham pitching.<\/p>\n<p>As a team, the RailRiders drew seven walks and benefited from two balks and two wild pitches to score on a night where the bats weren\u2019t quite clicking.<\/p>\n<p>With the win, Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre improves to 7-3 on the season, while Durham drops to 2-8 on the year after the loss.<\/p>\n<p>The RailRiders and Bulls will go at it once again on Thursday evening at PNC Field in the second game of their six-game set.<\/p>\n<p>First pitch is scheduled for 6:35 p.m. at PNC Field.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; The RailRiders had to wait an extra day to celebrate their home opener at PNC Field after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-161402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}