At the bottom of the ninth, Chihuahuas down a run to Round Rock, Dusty Coleman was up to bat with Javy Guerra on base and no one out. Two days before, Coleman was in a similar situation, hitting a high flying homer to left field for a walk-off two-run homer. But tonight, instead of yearning for the long ball, Coleman showed a bunt on three pitches to start.
A bunt? Most in the park thought to themselves.
On the fourth pitch, Coleman brought up his bat, powered his swing and shot an exceptional line drive to left field, opposite of where the Round Rock infield shift was commanded. He and Guerra were in scoring position, which set up Brett Nicholas up to bat.
Nicholas had a shot up on the right field and Coleman got just enough of a jump to race home and beat the throw, capping off a 2 RBI walk-off single by Nicholas. The Chihuahuas won, thus sweeping Round Rock in the series and winning their seventh straight.
At the bottom of the third inning, the Chihuahuas made their bats known with a three-run inning. It started with an exceptional Javy Guerra triple and a Dusty Coleman single, followed by an error on the grounder hit by Forrest Allday, which drove Guerra home. On a grounder by Francisco Mejia, Coleman scored for the Chihuahuas.
Raffy Lopez capped off the inning with an RBI double to bring Allday home for the score, thus capping the three-run inning.
Round Rock had an answering inning, as they tied El Paso at the top of the fifth. Tony Sanchez had a two-run homer for the Express, which was followed up by Christian Lopez’s RBI double to end the inning.
El Paso took the lead back in the bottom of the fifth, as Allen Craig had a commanding two-run double with two outs, bringing home Allday and Lopez for the scores.
The Express continued its rally at the top of the seventh, when they scored three runs on four hits to make it 6-5. Andy Ibanez and Scott Heineman scored on back-to-back RBI singles for Round Rock. At the bottom of the seventh, both Allday and manager Rod Barajas were ejected by home plate umpire David Arrieta on a called strikeout.
The bottom of the ninth is where El Paso found its last surge to win the game. They are now 4.5 games ahead of Salt Lake in the PCL Southern Division with the season winding down.
