Marco Luciano had two hits and two RBIs and the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders withstood a ninth-inning rally to defeat the Iowa Cubs, 4-3, on Wednesday afternoon at Principal Park\u2019s Sec Taylor Field in Des Moines.<\/p>\n
George Lombard Jr. also had two hits and Yanquiel Fernandez two RBIs for the RailRiders (18-9, 55-46), who have won the first two games of the six-game series and third straight game overall, although things did get interesting in the bottom of the ninth.<\/p>\n
Trailing, 4-1, Iowa had three consecutive one-out doubles by Greg Jones, Ben Cowles and Ethan Hearn off Yovanny Cruz to close within 4-3. However, Cruz was able to strike out the final two batters to earn his fourth save. Bradley Hanner (5-2), the second of four pitchers used by the RailRiders, got the win with 1.1 scoreless and hitless innings of relief.<\/p>\n
Righthander Jaxon Wiggins, the Chicago Cubs\u2019 top pitching prospect and No. 6 prospect overall in the organization, started for Iowa and the RailRiders got to him in the top of the first inning.<\/p>\n
Lombard, the Yankees\u2019 No. 1 prospect, led off the game with a walk, extending his on-base streak to 26 games. J.C. Escarra was hit by a pitch. Wiggins struck out the next two batters, but uncorked a wild pitch to allow the runners to advance one base. Fernandez then lined a single to right-center to score Lombard and Escarra and give the RailRiders a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
They extended it to 3-0 in the top of the third. Lombard led off with a single, stole second and scored, one out later, on a single by Luciano.<\/p>\n
Iowa threatened several times against RailRiders starter Brendan Beck, but the reigning and three-time International League Pitcher of the Week escaped each time. In the bottom of the second, the Cubs put runners at the corners with one out, but Beck struck out the next two batters to end the inning. In the fourth, the first two batters reached on singles. But Beck got a double play and a strike out to squash that threat.<\/p>\n
Finally, in the bottom of the fifth, Iowa broke through. Cowles led off with a double, but got caught in a rundown and tagged out on a fielder\u2019s choice by Hearn. After Hearn stole second, Hayden Cantrelle walked. Brett Bateman grounded into a fielder\u2019s choice that forced Cantrelle at second for the second out. But with Mois\u00e9s Ballesteros batting, Beck committed a balk that allowed Hearn to score and make it 3-1. After Ballesteros walked, Hanner relieved Beck and got an inning-ending groundout.<\/p>\n
Luciano got the run back with two outs in the top of the seventh when he hit a 1-0 pitch from Josh Fleming out to left field for his eighth home run and a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Eric Reyzelman threw two perfect innings of relief in the seventh and eighth innings with four strikeouts.<\/p>\n
The series continues Thursday at 7:38 p.m.\u00a0 Alexander Cornielle (1-2, 4.62) is scheduled to start for the RailRiders against Iowa lefty Jordan Wicks (0-8, 7.41).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Luciano had two hits and two RBIs and the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders withstood a ninth-inning rally to defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[51447,178,180,179,726],"class_list":["post-256355","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\/256355","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=256355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}