Rockies Grind Out A Win Over Indians

Jim Eppard had no idea his team had finally turned its fifth three-game winning streak into its first four-game winning streak.

“I don’t pay attention to it,” the Portland Rockies manager said after a 5-4 win over Spokane on Saturday night. “I look at it each day and I care about it, but I don’t worry about it. I think the team looks at it the same way. They’re there every day and kind of grind it out.”

That’s the perfect description of the win before 6,437 at Seafirst Stadium. The Rockies rallied from a 3-0 deficit, four different players drove in runs, five scored, six shared nine hits and four pitchers kept Spokane in check.

The leading hitter was Michael Johns, who needed all of his three hits to get his average to .200. The winning pitcher was Chris Price (2-1), who entered the game with an earned run average of 7.61.

“If you look, we’re in the middle of the pack in everything,” Eppard said. “We don’t have a lot of power, we don’t have a lot of speed … We play consistent, play hard, every day.”

Combined with Southern Oregon’s loss to Boise, the Rockies pushed their lead in the Northwest League’s South Division to three games while Spokane fell seven games behind the Hawks in the North.

Spokane took a 3-0 lead with single runs off Alvin Rivera in the second, third and fourth innings and with ace Justin Pedersen on the mound (4-1, 1.94 earned run average), that might have been enough.

But the Rockies battled back while Price slowed down the Indians. Portland pushed across a run in the fifth on a hit batter and a double by Johns. In the sixth, Pedersen issued his fourth walk (he had been allowing one every three innings) and Efrain Alamo followed with a towering two-run home run to left to tie the game. It was just the second home run for Alamo.

Pedersen got out of the sixth with a strikeout, then the Rockies got things going again in the seventh with two unearned runs off of Todd Meady (2-2). Andres Mitchell started the inning by reaching second on third baseman Rico Montas’ throwing error and going to third on a groundout. After Todd Sears walked, Mitchell scored on Jason Franklin’s sacrifice fly before Whitey Schwartzba uer’s double to right-center scored Sears to make it 5-3.

Spokane quickly got a run back in the bottom of the seventh when Rod Metzler’s sacrifice fly scored Montas. The Indians had a good chance to tie in the eighth before a heads-up double play by Sears ended the threat. Juan LeBron led off with a single to center and was sacrificed to second. Ara Petrosian, the fourth Portland pitcher, came in and got Mike Brambilla to hit a foul ball down the right-field line. Sears caught the ball over his shoulder and threw LeBron out trying to advance to third.

Petrosian then pitched a perfect ninth inning for his eighth save, the third against Spokane.

LeBron scored the first Spokane run. He ripped his league-leading 21st double down the left-field line leading off the second and scored on a single by Dave Willis.

Rich Petru led off the third with a single, stole second and scored on Dermal Brown’s two-out single, a little popup behind third that Portland shortstop Jerome Alviso dropped.

The third run came when Willis opened the third with a double to right-center and scored on Jeremy Hill’s two-out single.

Portland, 4-2 against the Indians, throws Ryan Seifert (1-3, 5.01) against Dan Reichert (0-3, 4.50), Kansas City’s No. 1 draft pick, tonight at 6 in the second game of the five-game series.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Indians’ month-at-a-glance