Las Vegas 51s’ Zach Borenstein hits walk-off against Sacramento
Before Zach Borenstein stepped to the plate in the ninth inning Wednesday night, teammate Phillip Evans, who had singled off Sacramento reliever Madison Younginer to begin the inning, had a couple words of advice for him.
“Evans told me before the at-bat (that) he’s got a big 12-6 curveball and don’t give up on it so when I saw it pop out, I was ready for it and luckily it found a hole,” Borenstein said.
Borenstein’s walk-off single to right completed a three-run rally in the ninth and sent fans home happy as the 51s beat Sacramento 6-5 on Wednesday night at Cashman Field.
His single came a couple batters after shortstop Luis Guillorme had tied the game 5-5 with a two-run single down the third-base line.
“In those situations when it’s a tie game and bases loaded less than two (out) and you see that the infield’s drawn in, I just tell myself not to do too much right there and just basically if you get a pitch to hit, just hit it,” Borenstein said. “It doesn’t need to be driven into the outfield, just there’s a good chance if I just put the barrel on the ball I’m going to find a hole when the infield’s drawn in that way.”
It was a big win for the 51s (11-16), who had been trailing since the sixth inning when the River Cats (12-14) scored three runs off starter Drew Gagnon.
Chris Shaw had given the River Cats a brief lead with a solo home run in the fourth but that lead disappeared as back-to-back blasts from Borenstein and Brentz in the bottom of the frame gave Las Vegas the lead.
But they lost it two innings later when Orlando Calixte drove in a pair with a two-run blast. Shaw’s went back-to-back with him with his second home run of the game.
“One of (the home runs) I thought was just a routine fly ball,” manager Tony DeFrancesco said. “The other one hit off the light tower. It’s amazing, if you can keep the guys offspeed and execute pitches, you don’t have those problems but it seems it’s always one inning with (Gagnon). Something’s going on. One inning is always the big inning.”
And for a while, it didn’t look like the 51s would be able to overcome the three-run sixth.
They had just four hits through seven innings.
Sacramento starter Dereck Rodriguez, the son of Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez, gave up the two home runs but otherwise kept Las Vegas mostly quiet.
“He’s got electric stuff. He’s got a fastball that’s in the mid-90s that he was commanding tonight on both sides of the plate. He was mixing well,” Borenstein said. “Throwing his offspeed enough to keep us of balance. We put a couple good swings on some balls but for the most part he did what he wanted to tonight and he was tough.”
And so for Las Vegas, the hits didn’t start coming until the later innings.
The 51s scored a run in the eighth off of reliever Dusten Knight with a Brentz RBI double that plated Guillorme before they completed the comeback an inning later.
“We’ve put together some late inning rallies and we’ve chipped away at some leads but haven’t been able to finish the job and so this was a good win for us,” Borenstein said. “We’ve been playing well as of late. The other night was a tough one but we bounced back and coming back … from a deficit tonight definitely gives us some momentum.”
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Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.
