Spokane Indians use six-run inning to win
Sam Wolff watched the Spokane Indians’ seventh inning unfold on Thursday night and tried to act as if nothing happened.
The Indians sent 12 runners to the plate during a six-run seventh to storm past the Eugene Emeralds 10-3 before a sellout crowd of 7,027 at Avista Stadium.
The opener of the five-game series gave the Indians (11-10) a record better than .500 for the first time this Northwest League season.
Spokane has a five-game winning streak for the first time since June 18-22, 2011.
Wolff (2-0) entered in the top of the seventh with Spokane trailing 3-2. He worked two scoreless innings, allowing one hit, striking out two and walking none. In six games this season, the recent sixth-round draft pick from the University of New Mexico has allowed four hits and no earned runs in 91/3 innings, with 11 strikeouts and three walks.
Wolff had to keep himself occupied as the Indians erupted against three relievers for three hits and four walks while taking advantage of two errors by Eugene (7-14).
“It’s definitely a weight off the shoulders when you see hitters do something like that, but at the same time I just tried to stay locked in and treat it as if it’s a 0-0 ballgame,” Wolff said.
The late-game outburst, which included a two-run sixth and a two-run eighth, gave the Indians 40 runs in their last five games.
“We’ve been swinging the bat pretty good now for about a week,” Indians manager Tim Hulett said. “That’s really about how we’ve been swinging it, those last three innings. … Really, our daily goal is 10 hits, six runs, so we accomplished that.”
The bats were silent for five innings against Eugene starter Erik Cabrera, who lowered his earned-run average from 7.71 to 5.68 with two-hit ball. No Indians batter reached second base until Kevin Torres’ double to center in the fifth.
Ten of the first 20 Emeralds reached base against Indians starter Kelvin Vasquez.
Spokane came alive when Cabrera exited, starting with Chris Garia’s leadoff double in the sixth against Genison Reyes. Alberto Triunfel tripled home Garia and scored on a wild pitch.
Torres had two singles in the big seventh, which included back-to-back, bases-loaded walks by Michael Kelly (0-1) to Triunfel and Ryan Cordell to put the Indians ahead for good.
“The offense has done a great job because we are attacking the fastball,” Torres said. “A couple of the first games I was here, everybody was late on the fastball.”
Garia and Triunfel were aboard four times apiece. Barrett Serrato and Triunfel combined for five RBIs.