The Kansas City T-Bones waited until the last inning Saturday night to ruin the Sioux City Explorers party at Mercy Field at Lewis and Clark Park in Iowa.
Facing a 1-0 deficit, the T-Bones got their first pinch-hit RBI of the season when Adrian Nieto came off the bench to single, bringing the tying run home in the form of Alay Lago.
Two batters later Mason Davis drove a double to the left field corner off X’s closer Eric Karch to drive in the go-ahead run.
Cody Winiarski got a 1-2-3 save facing the top of the order to notch the win and end a five-game road losing streak.
The rest of the game saw two solid pitching efforts with Lefty Ian McKinney for Sioux City and right-handed pitcher Tommy Collier of KC, dealing zeros across the board.
Collier retired the X’s in order in the second, third, fifth and sixth innings. He went on to hold Sioux City to four hits with four strikeouts. McKinney worked around four walks but added six strikeouts before he left the game in the eighth.
In the seventh Sioux City got their first hit since the fourth when Jose Sermo hit a solo home run to right for a 1-0 lead.
That ended a streak of 10 straight batters retired by Collier. KC threatened in the top of the eighth, eventually chasing McKinney on a single and a walk. With two outs Patrick Schuster got the final out to end the T-Bones chance.
That set up the dramatic ninth inning. Lago reached base on a dropped fly ball in center by Luis Durango.
Lago made a heads-up move, racing to second for KC. After a Keith Curcio pop out to short, Logan Moon reached on an infield single to put runners at the corners. From there, Nieto and Davis did their thing to drive in the two unearned runs.
The T-Bones won their 50th game of the season and increased their lead in the wild card race to two games over Wichita, which lost Saturday night at Cleburne.
Collier (9-3) got the win while Karch (2-2) was charged with the loss. Winiarski picked up his ninth save.
Kansas City (50-28) and Sioux City (58-21) will wrap up the four-game series at 6:05 p.m. Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa. The game be heard on the T-Bones Broadcast Network at http://mixlr.com/t-bones-baseball/.
The T-Bones will return home to T-Bones Stadium at 7:05 p.m. Tuesday, opening a six-game homestand against the Fargo-Morehead RedHawks.
Season, group tickets, mini-plans and nightly party suites are on sale now and can be purchased by visiting the box office at T-Bones Stadium. Call the box office at 913-328-5618 or purchase and print at www.tbonesbaseball.com. Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday – Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
– Story from T-Bones