By Laura Soukkavong –
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — September baseball leaves little room for games that get away, particularly for a team trying to chase down first place with fewer than two weeks remaining. The Worcester Red Sox had control Tuesday night, lost it gradually, reclaimed it in extra innings and then watched the Lehigh Valley IronPigs take it away for good.
Carter Kieboom delivered the final blow, lining a two-run single through the left side with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th inning to give Lehigh Valley a 5-4 victory at Coca-Cola Park. The IronPigs scored five of the final six runs after Worcester had built a 3-0 lead, handing the WooSox their second consecutive loss at a particularly costly point in the season.
The defeat dropped Worcester to 70-63 overall and 34-28 in the second half, while Lehigh Valley improved to 65-73 overall and 30-33 in the second half. More importantly for Worcester, the WooSox fell three games behind first-place Rochester in the International League second-half standings with only 11 games remaining.
There is still time for Worcester to make up that ground, but the calendar is beginning to work against the WooSox. A three-game deficit with 11 remaining is different from a three-game deficit in July or August because every lost opportunity removes another game from the schedule, and Tuesday represented an opportunity Worcester had positioned itself to take.
For the sixth consecutive game, the WooSox scored in the first inning. Braiden Ward opened the night by driving a triple down the right-field line, and Franklin Arias followed with a sacrifice fly to center field that brought Braiden Ward home and gave Worcester a 1-0 advantage.
That opening sequence was an example of how efficiently Worcester could manufacture offense when it created opportunities. Braiden Ward immediately put himself 90 feet from home plate, and Franklin Arias did not need a hit to bring him home as the WooSox established the early advantage.
The lead remained one run until Worcester created a much larger opportunity in the fifth inning. Braiden Ward again started the rally, this time with a leadoff double, and Franklin Arias followed on the next pitch with a bloop single down the right-field line that scored Braiden Ward and made it 2-0.
Franklin Arias continued applying pressure after reaching base by stealing second. Anthony Seigler then singled to left field, allowing Franklin Arias to advance to third, and Mikey Romero delivered with two outs by singling into right field to score Franklin Arias and extend Worcester’s advantage to 3-0.
Through five innings, Worcester had constructed the kind of game a team in a September race needs to finish. Braiden Ward had been the catalyst twice, Franklin Arias had driven him home twice and Mikey Romero had supplied another run with two outs as the WooSox created some separation on the scoreboard.
The problem was that Worcester never added another run in regulation. Once Lehigh Valley began cutting into the lead, the WooSox were unable to create another cushion, and the IronPigs steadily worked their way back rather than erasing the deficit with one enormous inning.
Otto Kemp started the comeback in the bottom of the sixth against Worcester reliever Patrick Halligan. Otto Kemp led off the inning with a home run, cutting the Worcester advantage to 3-1 and giving Lehigh Valley its first run of the night.
The IronPigs moved another run closer in the seventh. Dylan Moore singled to left field against Hobie Harris, and Christian Cairo drew a walk before Otto Kemp hit a sharp ground ball toward third base that caromed off Mikey Romero and into foul territory for an error.
Dylan Moore scored from second base on the play, reducing Worcester’s lead to 3-2. A game the WooSox had controlled through five innings had suddenly become a one-run game, and Lehigh Valley had another two innings to find the tying run.
That run came in the eighth, when Worcester again found itself dealing with traffic on the bases. The inning began with consecutive walks before Colby Thomas reached on a bunt single, loading the bases with nobody out and leaving the WooSox almost no margin for error.
Dylan Moore followed with a sacrifice fly to left field that scored Keaton Anthony from third base. Worcester escaped without allowing Lehigh Valley to take the lead, but the 3-0 advantage the WooSox had carried into the bottom of the sixth was completely gone.
The manner in which the lead disappeared mattered as much as the fact that it disappeared. Lehigh Valley scored once in the sixth, once in the seventh and once in the eighth, steadily applying pressure while Worcester’s offense went scoreless after the fifth.
Neither team scored in the ninth, sending the game into extra innings and giving Worcester another opportunity to recover from the blown lead. The WooSox took advantage of it and put themselves back in position to leave Coca-Cola Park with a victory.
Mikey Romero began the 10th inning at second base and eventually advanced to third. With one out, Allan Castro lifted a sacrifice fly into right field, allowing Mikey Romero to score and restoring Worcester’s lead at 4-3.
After everything that had happened during the previous four innings, Worcester had managed to put itself back in front. The WooSox were three outs from ending their losing streak and gaining an important victory in a race in which every remaining game had become increasingly valuable.
Those three outs never came.
Osvaldo Berrios took over in the bottom of the 10th, and Lehigh Valley loaded the bases with one out after two walks and a strikeout. That brought Carter Kieboom to the plate with an opportunity to tie the game with one run or end it with two.
Carter Kieboom did the latter, lining a single through the left side that drove home two runs. The comeback was complete, and a night that had begun with Worcester scoring first ended with Lehigh Valley celebrating a 5-4 victory.
Kirby Snead earned the victory for the IronPigs and improved to 6-2 after allowing one unearned run over 1 2/3 innings. Osvaldo Berrios fell to 2-2 after allowing two runs, one earned, while recording only one out in the 10th inning.
For Worcester, the most troubling part of the loss was not an inability to create opportunities. The WooSox had enough offense to build a three-run advantage, and when that disappeared, they manufactured another run in the 10th to regain the lead.
What Worcester could not do was finish the game from either position. The WooSox could not protect the 3-0 advantage they carried into the bottom of the sixth, and after Allan Castro’s sacrifice fly gave them another lead in the 10th, they could not protect that one either.
The walks also became increasingly costly as the game moved toward its conclusion. Christian Cairo’s walk contributed to Lehigh Valley’s seventh-inning run, consecutive walks helped load the bases before the tying sacrifice fly in the eighth, and two more walks were part of the decisive 10th-inning rally.
That is the kind of detail that becomes magnified during September. Worcester is no longer playing games that can simply be absorbed into the middle of a long schedule, because there are only 11 opportunities remaining to erase a three-game deficit.
There were encouraging pieces in the loss, beginning with Braiden Ward. His triple and double started both of Worcester’s early scoring rallies, and he scored twice as the WooSox continued a six-game streak of putting a run on the scoreboard in the first inning.
Franklin Arias was directly involved in both of those runs and later scored Worcester’s third. Mikey Romero provided the two-out run-scoring single in the fifth and eventually scored the go-ahead run in the 10th, while Allan Castro delivered the sacrifice fly that temporarily rescued the WooSox after their original lead had disappeared.
Those contributions were enough to create a winning position, but not enough to create a victory. That distinction becomes especially painful when Worcester looks beyond Tuesday’s box score and toward the International League standings.
With Rochester three games ahead and only 11 remaining, Worcester does not need to calculate every possible outcome yet. The WooSox do, however, need to begin turning games they control into games they win, because there are increasingly fewer opportunities to recover from nights like Tuesday.
The series itself remains recoverable. Worcester has an immediate opportunity Wednesday night to stop its two-game losing streak and even the series before the week gets any further away from it.
Right-hander Jedixson Paez is scheduled to start for Worcester with an 0-1 record and a 2.92 earned run average. Lehigh Valley is scheduled to counter with right-hander Brian Keller, who enters at 1-5 with a 6.09 earned run average, with first pitch scheduled for 6:45 p.m. at Coca-Cola Park.
One loss does not decide an 11-game race, and even two consecutive losses do not eliminate Worcester from it. But the WooSox have reached the point of the season when every defeat changes what is required from the games that remain, and Tuesday made the road more difficult.
Worcester had the early lead, had a three-run cushion and then had another lead in the 10th inning. The WooSox had several chances to make Tuesday a night that moved them closer to first place, but instead they left Coca-Cola Park three games behind Rochester and with one fewer opportunity to close the distance.
Wednesday now becomes the next opportunity, and there is little value in looking any further ahead than that. With 11 games remaining and three games separating Worcester from first place, the WooSox need victories, and the painful part about Tuesday is that they had one within reach.