The RoughRiders still had life in their bats Tuesday night. They just spent the first two innings making the climb too steep, and the rest of the night showed how costly that can get when a September game starts with extra outs.
Frisco finished with 11 hits, Dylan Dreiling stretched his hitting streak to 22 games with his 22nd home run, and Sebastian Walcott homered for the third straight game, but Amarillo’s early avalanche held up in a 9-5 Sod Poodles win at Riders Field.
The damage came fast. Amarillo scored three runs in the first inning and four more in the second, building a 7-1 lead before Frisco could get settled. D.J. McCarty took the loss after allowing six earned runs over 3.2 innings, striking out five and walking two, while the RoughRiders set a season high with five errors.
Druw Jones delivered the first big blow. After Angel Ortiz’s sacrifice fly opened the scoring, Jones jumped on McCarty’s first pitch and sent it out to left-center field, a two-run homer that left little doubt and made it 3-0 before Frisco had taken a swing.
The Riders answered immediately in the bottom of the first. Walcott walked, moved to third on Dreiling’s groundout, and scored when Rafe Perich lined a single the other way into left. It was the first of three hits for Perich, who went 3-for-4 with a double, a walk and two RBIs.
But Amarillo turned the game in the second. Jean Walters was hit by a pitch, Trent Youngblood singled, and Cristofer Torin hooked a run-scoring double down the left-field line. Avery Owusu-Asiedu added a sacrifice fly, and Ortiz followed with a drive to deep right that became the inning’s defining defensive mistake. Yeison Morrobel chased it back toward the warning track, but the ball came off his glove, allowing Torin to score and Ortiz to reach second. Ben McLaughlin’s two-out single brought Ortiz home for a 7-1 Amarillo lead.
From there, Frisco’s offense had to play from behind all night.
Dreiling gave the Riders their loudest answer in the third. Walcott singled with one out, and Dreiling lifted a high fly to center that kept carrying until Jones ran out of room. The two-run homer pulled Frisco within 7-3 and continued a streak that has become one of the lineup’s constants. Dreiling finished 3-for-5 with a homer, a double and two RBIs.
The trouble was that every push came with more deficit attached. Amarillo added a run in the fourth and another in the fifth, including a two-error sequence in the fourth that let Jones come around from second and Owusu-Asiedu’s RBI single in the fifth. Youngblood reached four times for Amarillo, going 3-for-4 with a hit-by-pitch and three runs, and Torin went 3-for-5 with a double and an RBI.
Frisco created traffic in the middle innings without cashing it in. Luke Hanson singled in the fourth as part of a two-on chance. Dreiling singled in the fifth before being picked off and caught stealing at third. Arturo Disla doubled in the sixth on a ball that got past Ortiz and rolled to the wall, but that inning ended with two men aboard. Perich doubled in the seventh, too, only to be stranded.
Hanson, who made his Double-A debut last week, had spoken before the game about the daily rhythm of a long season and the adjustment that comes with it.
“I just think it takes away the results aspect of it a little bit and condensed seasons, more like college and stuff. You really have those pressing moments, but here you can really learn and adapt and figure out day to day what you need to adjust to be better for the next game,” Hanson said.
That fit a night when Frisco’s later work was cleaner than its start. Zach Bryant allowed one earned run over 2.1 innings after taking over in the fourth, and Bryan Magdaleno and Leandro Lopez combined for three scoreless innings with four strikeouts. Magdaleno struck out the first two batters he faced in a perfect seventh, and Lopez worked around a single and a double across his two innings.
The ninth gave the Riders one more flash. Walcott drove a ball to left-center for his sixth homer, and Dreiling followed with a double to center. Perich then lined a single into right, scoring Dreiling and trimming the final margin to four.
It was not enough to undo the beginning. For a team already pointed toward playoff baseball, though, the game left two truths sitting side by side: Frisco has enough thump to make a bad night interesting, and five errors will bury even a lineup that keeps swinging.