Dragons rally falls short Wednesday

Dayton, Ohio—Yefri Carvajal drilled a tie-breaking two-run single in the top of the ninth inning to lift the Fort Wayne TinCaps to an 8-6 victory over the Dayton Dragons on Wednesday. The Fort Wayne win spoiled a Dragons comeback bid. Dayton trailed 5-1 at one point before rallying to tie the game at 6-6 in the eighth inning.

Fort Wayne jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the second inning. Allan Dykstra led off the inning with a long home run to left-center field, his fifth of the season. Cole Figueroa followed with a double and one out later, Dragons starting pitcher Oscar Castro issued three consecutive walks to force in a run. Drew Cumberland then added a sacrifice fly to give Fort Wayne a three-run lead.

The Dragons scored an unearned run in the third but Fort Wayne answered with single runs in the fourth and fifth innings to take a 5-1 lead.

In the Dayton sixth, Carlos Mendez singled to right to start the inning and Cody Puckett followed with a two-run home run to left, his 12th homer of the year, to make it 5-3. Byron Wiley walked and stole second, but was thrown out trying to score from second on a single to right by Kevin Coddington. After a walk to Kyle Day, Miguel Rojas doubled to right to score Coddington and pull the Dragons to within one at 5-4. Andrew Means walked to load the bases, but Dave Sappelt struck out to end the threat.

Fort Wayne scored one run in the top of the eighth to take a 6-4 lead, but the Dragons answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning to tie the game. Dayton got back-to-back two-out walks with the bases loaded by Carlos Mendez and Cody Puckett to force in the tying runs.

Dayton reliever Junior Martinez (2-1) issued consecutive one-out walks in the ninth and was replaced by Scott Gaffney. After an infield hit loaded the bases, Carvajal lined a single to center to give Fort Wayne an 8-6 lead. TinCaps reliever Brad Brach allowed only a one-out single to Kevin Coddington in the bottom of the ninth to earn his 18th save.

Dayton finished with nine hits. Rojas collected three hits to lead the way. Coddington had two hits and extended his hitting streak to nine straight games while raising his batting average to .306.

The Dragons (3-3, 31-45) host the TinCaps (5-1, 50-26) in the third game of the series on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at Fifth Third Field. Lance Janke (4-3, 3.44) will start for the Dragons against Stiven Osuna (3-6, 5.27).