El Paso, TX- Right-hander Nick Singleton rebounded from a poor outing his second time out and picked up a win in his third start of the season, throwing six strong innings on Tuesday night at Cohen Stadium as Kansas City topped El Paso, 9-6.
Singleton allowed only two earned runs on nine hits, struck out three and didn’t walk a single Diablos hitter. The win pushed the T-Bones’ winning streak to five consecutive games as their overall record improved to 7-5.
The scoring began in the second inning for KC, as the T-Bones pushed two runs across against Diablos starter Osvaldo Rodriguez. With two outs and nobody on base, Devin Goodwin, Bubby Williams, and Jose Duran came up with consecutive singles.
The T-Bones came right back with two more runs in the top of the third inning, as Kala Ka’aihue picked up an RBI on a 5-3 ground-out and Justin Bass hit a sacrifice fly to left to notch his team-leading tenth RBI of the season.
Kansas City tacked on one run in the fourth and three in the fifth, pushing the cushion to 8-3.
All the while, El Paso continued to kick the baseball around the diamond, tacking three errors onto their series total.
After committing five in a 9-4 loss to KC on Monday night, the Diablos have now committed eight errors over the first two games of the series.
Blue Springs, Mo. native Bubby Williams knocked in another T-Bones run in the seventh inning with two outs, as the T-Bones catcher ripped a rising line drive over right-fielder Nelson Teilon’s head for an RBI triple.
Bass scored on the play to make the score 9-3 Kansas City. El Paso answered with three runs off of lefty Christian Kowalchuk in the eighth inning, including a home run, triple, double, and single.
Jonathan Cisneros hit the homer, a two-run shot to right, his first long ball of 2012. The rally chased Kowalchuk, and T-Bones manager Kenny Hook turned to hard-throwing right-hander Sean Toler to finish the game.
He induced a groundout by Bryan Frichter to end the eighth, then struck out two Diablos in a scoreless ninth to earn the save and nail down the victory. The save was Toler’s first in a T-Bones uniform.
Kansas City has a chance to notch a perfect road trip (6-0) with a victory on Wednesday night at Cohen Stadium. The T-Bones send southpaw Devin Anderson (1-1; 3.60) to the mound and El Paso turns to right-hander Freddy Flores (0-1; 3.75).
Game time is set for 8:05 CT, with the pre-game show beginning on 1660 AM and online at www.tbonesbaseball.com at 7:45.
