Zak Kent made his eighth start of the season. Prior to first pitch in Wichita, he had a 0-1 win-loss record with a 6.75 earned run average.
Kent’s career-high in strikeouts is 13.
By the end of the game Kent had pitched seven innings and shaved over a run off of his earned run average and brought it to 5.61 for the season. This was his best start of the season by far. Of his 9 strikeouts/7 were swinging. He was pretty economical with his pitches as well throwing 89 pitches/58 for strikes.
Kent’s 7 innings were the longest by a RoughRiders starter so far this season.
The Wichita Wind Surge found the scoreboard first in the bottom of the 2nd from an RBI-double off the bat of DaShawn Keirsey Jr.
Trey Hair played hero at the plate for the RoughRiders when he sent a ball 403 feet to right center field for a 2-run shot. That gave the RoughRiders a 2-1 lead in top of the 4th.
Tai Tiedemann came out of the pen to replace Kent in the bottom of the 8th. He faced three batters, the first of which reached on a fielding error by Jax Biggers. A stolen base and wall later had runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs. Daniel Ozoria was out on a sac-bunt, moving both runners up a base to 2nd and 3rd with only one out.
Manager Jared Goedert made a brilliant move to the bullpen and brought in Chase Lee for a five-out save. The move worked as Lee retired all the batters he faced.
For the last out, Lee was able to get Matt Wallner swinging on a slider on the inside corner. Lee had three strikeouts in his 1.2 innings and earned his 4th save of the season on a brilliant outing.
Each team managed only four hits. The RoughRiders scored two runs on four hits, three walks and ten strikeouts. Jax Biggers had two of the four hits for the RoughRiders. Ezequiel Duran had a single and of course Trey Hair had the two-run home run in the 4th that held.
The RoughRiders move to 27-22.
Up next
LHP Avery Weems (1-4, 7.67) goes for Frisco on the mound against RHP Louie Varland (4-1, 3.61) on Saturday. First pitch 6:05 PM Central.
