Chase Jessee stood on the mound with two outs in the fourth inning, the bases loaded and a one-run lead slipping from his grasp. He took a deep breath before facing Sean McLain, but his fastball sailed well outside for ball four. When another full-count fastball missed low to Jose Izarra, Tulsa had walked its way in front for good.
Those consecutive bases-loaded walks forced home the tying and deciding runs in the Northwest Arkansas Naturals’ 3-2 loss to the Drillers on Friday night at Arvest Ballpark.
Jessee struck out two in the inning, including Griffin Lockwood-Powell for the second out, but could not finish it. He hit Kole Myers with a pitch, allowed a Jake Gelof single and walked Elijah Hainline to load the bases. McLain and Izarra followed with the run-scoring walks, ending Jessee’s outing after two-thirds of an inning.
The left-hander allowed two earned runs, walked three and took the loss, dropping to 2-3.
Northwest Arkansas had built its lead with immediate pressure and one long, stubborn at-bat.
Sam Kulasingam opened the bottom of the first by crushing a fastball toward right-center. The ball carried over Myers and struck the middle of the wall, leaving Kulasingam standing at second with his 24th double. Spencer Nivens dropped a single into right, and Connor Scott brought Kulasingam home with a sacrifice fly for a 1-0 lead.
Lockwood-Powell answered against Steven Zobac in the second, driving a first-pitch fastball the other way and into the Naturals’ bullpen for his eighth home run.
Angel Acosta restored the lead in the bottom half. After fouling off pitch after pitch in a prolonged battle with Christian Zazueta, Acosta drove a 2-2 fastball deep to right. The ball cleared the wall and landed in the Naturals’ bullpen for his first Double-A home run, putting Northwest Arkansas ahead 2-1.
Acosta finished 1-for-3 with an RBI. The Naturals, however, did not score again over the final seven innings.
Zobac held Tulsa to Lockwood-Powell’s solo shot over three innings, striking out two without issuing a walk. After Jessee’s fourth-inning trouble, Brandon Johnson entered with the bases still loaded and struck out Agustin Acosta to stop the damage.
Johnson, Tyson Guerrero and Zachary Cawyer kept the deficit at one by combining for 5.1 scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and no walks. Johnson supplied 2.1 innings, Guerrero struck out four in two innings, and Cawyer worked around two ninth-inning singles to preserve the 3-2 margin.
The offense could not make the pitching stand hold up. Tulsa’s bullpen covered four scoreless innings and struck out six.
Nivens gave the Naturals repeated chances, reaching base three times with a single and two walks while also stealing a base. Before the game, he described patience as central to his approach.
“I think that’s one of the most important parts of being a good hitter is waiting for your pitch because obviously pitchers are wanting you to swing at their pitches.”
— Spencer Nivens, Naturals Outfielder
Nivens walked in the third and again in the eighth, but neither opportunity produced a run. His ability to resist pitches near the edge, he said, is meant to force pitchers back toward a more hittable part of the plate.
“And if you can take those, you know, borderline to balls, then they’ve got to throw some stuff over the middle of the plate. And then you just have to be sure that you don’t miss it whenever they do.”
— Spencer Nivens, Naturals Outfielder
Hyungchan Um supplied two of Northwest Arkansas’ six hits. His seventh-inning single put the tying run aboard, and Angel Acosta’s groundout moved him to second, but Luke Fox stranded him there with a strikeout.
Tulsa finished with seven hits to the Naturals’ six. The difference was not a hard-hit ball in the fourth, but two full-count pitches that missed with the bases loaded—and an early lead that Northwest Arkansas never recovered.