Tacoma’s two early leads arrived with the satisfying certainty of balls disappearing over the left-field wall. The trouble came later, inning after inning, as Round Rock turned a close game into a slow-moving rout.
The Express scored eight runs across their final four offensive innings Thursday at Dell Diamond, handing the Rainiers a 9-3 loss after Tacoma had led 1-0 and 2-1.
Connor Joe struck first in the second inning. With two strikes, he drove Dalton Pence’s pitch beyond the left-field track and halfway up the berm for his 11th home run of the season. Cam Cauley answered for Round Rock in the third, sending a solo homer past the Express bullpen in left-center.
Patrick Wisdom restored Tacoma’s lead in the fourth. His drive to left sent Aaron Zavala back until he ran out of room, giving Wisdom his 35th homer and his second in as many games. The Rainiers loaded the bases later in the inning on three walks, but Willie MacIver struck out to leave the lead at 2-1.
Tacoma did not score again until the eighth.
Jhonathan Díaz kept the Express behind through four innings despite allowing baserunners in three of them. Round Rock finally broke through against him with two outs in the fifth. John Taylor walked, and Kyle Higashioka lined a 1-1 pitch down the left-field line, where it stayed fair and cleared the wall. Higashioka’s two-run homer gave the Express a 3-2 lead they never relinquished.
Díaz took the loss after allowing three earned runs over five innings. He walked three and struck out one.
The sixth was where the game came apart. Josh Simpson struck out Zavala before walking Keyber Rodriguez and allowing a single to Frainyer Chavez. Logan O’Hoppe then hit a ground ball back through the middle. Shortstop Leo Rivas got to it, but the ball came off his glove and rolled into the grass as Rodriguez scored.
Cooper Johnson followed with an opposite-field RBI single on an 0-2 pitch, and Taylor added another run-scoring single with two outs. Simpson recorded two outs but was charged with three runs, only one earned.
That inning pushed Round Rock’s lead to 6-2 and changed the shape of the night. The Express added a run against Robinson Ortiz in the seventh when Jonah Bride singled and scored on Chavez’s double. Two more came against Domingo Gonzalez in the eighth, on Taylor’s sacrifice fly and Higashioka’s RBI single.
Higashioka finished 3-for-5 with a homer and three RBIs, supplying both the swing that erased Tacoma’s final lead and the last hit in Round Rock’s four-inning scoring stretch.
The Rainiers’ only response came in the eighth. Andy Ibáñez doubled to left, moved to third on Joe’s groundout and scored on Nolan Jones’ fly ball. Ibáñez had two of Tacoma’s five hits and scored its final run.
Tacoma’s offense never found traction against the Round Rock bullpen. Joe Ross, John King and Josh Sborz combined for four scoreless innings and seven strikeouts, while the Rainiers struck out 13 times overall. Wisdom’s home run stood as his only hit in four at-bats, with strikeouts in each of the other three.
What began as a back-and-forth game of solo homers ended with a six-run margin. Tacoma’s two leads were gone by the fifth, and the pitching-and-defense breakdown that followed left little room for the lineup to recover.