Frisco did not need one dominant arm Thursday night at Arvest Ballpark. It had four of them, stacked neatly across nine innings, each handing the next one a scoreless game until the RoughRiders finally turned a taut bullpen night into something much easier to carry home.
Cole Stasio, Eric Loomis, Leandro Lopez and Josh Trentadue combined on a three-hit shutout, and Frisco broke loose for five runs in the seventh inning of a 7-0 win over Northwest Arkansas. The RoughRiders finished with seven runs, 11 hits and one error while holding the Naturals to three hits.
For most of the night, that margin felt impossible to see coming.
Hunter Owen made sure of that. The Northwest Arkansas starter took the loss, but he allowed just one earned run over 5.2 innings, struck out 10 and walked one. Frisco put traffic on him, including a bases-loaded chance in the second and Arturo Disla’s double in the fifth, but could not stretch the early lead it grabbed before Owen had settled fully into the game.
Sebastian Walcott created that lead almost immediately. He opened the night by driving a ball into center field and turning it into a hustle double, pushing for second before the Naturals could shut the play down. Disla followed with a fly ball deep enough to left field, and Walcott came home easily for a 1-0 lead.
That one run held for six innings because Frisco’s pitching staff kept closing every door Northwest Arkansas cracked open.
Stasio set the tone with three scoreless innings, five strikeouts and no walks. The Naturals had their best early look in the first, when Spencer Nivens doubled with one out, but Stasio struck out Daniel Vazquez and Jorge Alfaro to strand him. He followed with a quiet second and third, leaving the game with the lead still intact and the Naturals still chasing their first run.
Loomis took the fourth and worked around a leadoff walk to Nivens, striking out Vazquez and Alfaro before Connor Scott popped out. Lopez, who earned the win and improved to 2-2, carried the middle of the game with three scoreless innings, three strikeouts and one walk. Trentadue finished it with two scoreless innings, two strikeouts and one walk, working through Nivens’ ninth-inning single before closing the shutout.
The game finally broke in the seventh, and it did so quickly enough to make the first six innings feel like a setup.
Caden Monke walked Luke Hanson to start the inning, got Marcus Lee Sang on strikes, then walked Walcott. Disla followed with the swing that changed the night: a ground ball through the middle that scored Hanson and Walcott. What had been a one-run game became a three-run cushion, and the RoughRiders had the part of the order they wanted still coming.
Max Wagner kept it moving, looping a double down the left-field line as Disla pushed to third. Yeison Morrobel then found the middle of the field too, sending a ground ball into center to bring home Disla and Wagner. Two ground balls through the heart of the diamond had produced four runs, and a pitching duel had become a Frisco runaway.
The inning did not stop there. After Tommy Molsky entered and Corey Joyce flew out, Ian Moller reached when Daniel Vazquez’s throw pulled the play apart at first. Morrobel scored on the error, capping the five-run inning and giving the RoughRiders a 6-0 lead.
That was more than enough on a night when Northwest Arkansas never got a runner past third base and struck out 12 times against Frisco pitching.
Disla went 2-for-4 with a double and three RBIs, driving in the first three runs of the game. Morrobel went 3-for-5 with two RBIs and a run, including the seventh-inning single that turned insurance into distance. Wagner went 2-for-5 with a double, a home run and two strikeouts, adding the final run in the ninth when he lifted his 19th homer to left-center off Anthony Simonelli.
By then, the shape of the night had long been decided. The RoughRiders had spent six innings protecting a one-run lead with pitching, then used one inning of pressure, contact and a defensive mistake to make sure the shutout had room to breathe.