Syracuse, NY –One night after a ninth-inning rally to pick up a win, the Syracuse Mets experienced the other side of the coin on Wednesday night. The Durham Bulls scored five runs in the top of the ninth to turn a tie game into an 11-6 Durham win on Wednesday night at NBT Bank Stadium. The six-game series is now tied at one game apiece.
Durham (58-64, 22-25) got to Syracuse (66-54, 20-26) first with a run in the top of the third inning. A solo home run for Heriberto Hernandez off of Brandon Sproat got the Bulls in pole position early, 1-0.
In the bottom of the third, the Mets bounced right back. Three runs on five singles put the home team in front 3-1 after three innings. Jackie Bradley Jr., Luisangel Acuña, and Brett Baty provided the RBI knocks in the three-run third.
In the top of the fourth, the Bulls bruised Sproat again, tagging Sproat for four runs to regain the lead at 5-3. All the runs came on two-out hits as a two-run double from Ronny Simon and a two-run homer from Hernandez powered the Bulls back in front.
Durham got to Sproat again in the fifth on a Tristan Peters homer that boosted the lead to 6-3, and Sproat was pulled shortly thereafter. The final line for Sproat on Wednesday night was nine hits and six earned runs in five innings with no walks and no strikeouts.
Sproat, widely considered the top pitching prospect in the New York Mets minor-league system, had trouble limiting damage in the game. Five of the nine hits he gave up were extra-base hits, three of which were home runs.
From there, the comeback trail began for the Mets. Syracuse got a run back on a Drew Gilbert solo shot in the bottom of the fifth, slimming the deficit to 6-4.
In the sixth and seventh, the Mets came close to tying the game but left two runners on base in each of the innings without pushing any runs across home plate.
In the bottom of the eighth, Syracuse finally broke the dam and tied up the game. A leadoff double from DJ Stewart put a runner immediately in scoring position, and then after a flyout, Austin Allen stepped into the spotlight. The pinch-hitter hit a game-tying, two-run home run over the right-field fence, knotting the game up, 6-6.
In the top of the ninth, it was Durham’s turn to go to the bench to find some magic. Bob Seymour grabbed a bat as a pinch-hitter with two outs and nobody on base, promptly bringing some thunder on a chillier August night. Seymour smoked a solo homer over the right-field wall to put the Bulls in front, 7-6. That was Seymour’s 13thhome run in 34 games at the Triple-A level this season. The Bulls weren’t done there though. An Austin Shenton walk, an Osleivis Basabe single, and a Logan Driscoll double got another run across home plate and pushed the lead back out to two runs, 8-6. That was immediately followed by a two-out, two-run double from Simon that turned it into a four-run game at 10-6. It was Simon’s second different double with two outs that scored two runs in the game. The scoring in the inning finally ended when an error allowed a run to score to make it an 11-6 ballgame.
The Mets didn’t score in the bottom of the ninth, ensuring the Bulls would bounce back and win the second game of the series after dropping the opener on Tuesday night.
The Syracuse Mets are back home all week to take on the Durham Bulls for the first and only time in the 2024 season. Game three of the series against the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays is set for a 6:35 p.m. first pitch on Thursday. Right-hander Blade Tidwell is slated to start for the Mets opposed by left-hander Ian Seymour for the Bulls.
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