51s take early lead but drop opener, 4-3

Lorenzo Bundy’s debut as 51s manager wasn’t what he had hoped for — a 4-3 loss to the host Salt Lake Bees on Thursday night — but he certainly wasn’t disheartened by the season-opening outcome.

“You learn from every game, and we’ll learn from this one,” Bundy said by phone from Franklin Covey Stadium in Salt Lake City after the Bees won in the bottom of the ninth inning on an RBI double off the left-field wall by Nick Gorneault.

“We’ll be back out there tomorrow night giving the same effort we gave tonight. We’ll just look to score a few more runs. (The Bees’ pitching staff) threw seven innings of zeroes at us after we took the lead and you can’t let that happen in this league.”

Las Vegas jumped to a 3-0 advantage on a first-inning home run by James Loney and run-scoring singles in the second by Tomas Perez and Tony Abreu.

But with Salt Lake starter Kasey Olenberger finally settling down, the Bees scrapped back with a run in the third and two in the fourth to tie the game at 3.

The Bees won the opener of the four-game series when Gorneault doubled home Kendry Morales, who had singled with one out.

The back-to-back hits made a loser of Las Vegas reliever Chin-hui Tsao (0-1), who came on to start the ninth.

“Tsao got a couple of pitches up in the zone and that hurt. But that’s not what lost us the game,” Bundy said. “It was all those zeroes.”

Starter Eric Shults went 3 2/3 innings for the 51s.

Mitch Jones had three singles for Las Vegas, which outhit Salt Lake 8-7.