Five home runs powered the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders to an 11-3 victory over the Syracuse Mets on Thursday night at PNC Field in Moosic.<\/p>\n
Two of the home runs came in the second inning off Syracuse starter and New York Mets No. 2 prospect Jonah Tong. The RailRiders roughed up the righthander for seven runs (six earned) on five hits in 1.2 innings with three walks, three strikeouts and three wild pitches. Tong entered the game as the International League strikeout leader with 52.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the first, George Lombard Jr. reached on an error. Yanquiel Fernandez singled and, one out later, Oswaldo Cabrera singled to score Lombard for a 1-0 lead. Fernandez went to third on Cabrera\u2019s single and scored on a wild pitch to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
Syracuse got one of the runs back in the top of the second against RailRiders starter Adam Kloffenstein. The Mets loaded the bases with a single, a hit batsman and a walk with one out. Former RailRider Ben Rortvedt hit a sacrifice fly. Catcher\u2019s interference reloaded the bases, but Kloffenstein got Nick Morabito on a comebacker to escape the inning.<\/p>\n
Then the RailRiders (22-18) started to play long ball in the bottom of the second.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Ornelas led off with a triple and, after Duke Ellis walked, Lombard grounded into a forceout, scoring Ornelas for his first Triple-A RBI. With two outs, Marco Luciano jumped on Tong\u2019s first pitch to him for a two-run home run that made it 5-1. It was Luciano\u2019s first home run with the team. Cabrera then walked and Seth Brown followed with a two-run home run to extend the advantage to 7-1 and end Tong\u2019s outing.<\/p>\n
Luciano walked to open the bottom of the fourth and Cabrera followed with a home run to right field that made it 9-1. One out later, Ernesto Martinez Jr. and Payton Henry hit back-to-back home runs for an 11-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The Mets scored solo runs in the fifth and sixth innings on a pair of forceouts to end the scoring.<\/p>\n
Yovanny Cruz (5-1) pitched 1.1 innings in relief of Kloffenstein to get the win. Dylan Coleman threw one scoreless innings with one walk and two strikeouts and Zach Messinger worked two perfect innings with three strikeouts to close out the victory.<\/p>\n
Ornelas had three hits and was a home run shy of the cycle. Luciano, Cabrera and Henry had two hits apiece.<\/p>\n
On Friday at 6:35 p.m., the series is scheduled to continue at PNC Field. Dom Hamel (1-5, 9.49) gets the start for the RailRiders against Syracuse lefthander Zach Thornton (0-1, 4.50).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five home runs powered the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders to an 11-3 victory over the Syracuse Mets on Thursday night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[51447,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-193967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-rail-riders","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193967","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=193967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}