Aces hold off Aviators 9-8, even series behind Ray's return

Dylan Ray’s first inning back from the injured list told the whole story for Reno: one loud mistake, then a stretch of composed work that gave the Aces a real chance to win. Joshua Kuroda-Grauer opened the game with a solo home run, but Ray answered by settling in and getting through the next three innings without another run. For a club trying to stabilize its rotation and avoid dropping the series, that mattered as much as the final 9-8 score.

Ray finished with four strikeouts, four hits allowed and two walks, a line that looked more useful than flashy but still checked the right boxes. He did not have to dominate to make an impact. He simply kept the Aviators from turning the opener into a bigger problem, and that was enough for Reno’s offense to go to work behind him.

The Aces answered immediately. Kristian Robinson led off the home half with a triple to deep center and scored on a Tommy Troy RBI groundout. Troy and Luken Baker then doubled to push Reno ahead, and Baker’s line-drive knock brought in two runs. Luis Urías, the newest bat in the lineup, followed with an RBI single down the left-field line, turning Ray’s brief wobble into a fast-moving lead.

Reno kept building in the middle innings. Robinson drove in two more runs in the sixth and later scored on a wild pitch after moving up on a throwing error, giving the Aces more separation. Urías added the inning’s biggest swing in the seventh, launching his first Reno home run of the season to create some cushion for a bullpen that would need every bit of it.

That cushion disappeared in a hurry. Las Vegas scored six times over the final two innings, including four runs in the eighth, and had the tying run on base when the game ended. Isaiah Campbell earned the win in relief, but the last stretch was less about style than survival. Baker and Urías both finished with three hits, and Reno needed nearly every one of them to finish off a game that threatened to slip away late.

The bigger takeaway was not the chaos in the ninth. It was what Ray’s return suggested for Reno’s pitching picture right now: a starter who can take the ball, absorb an early punch and still give the Aces usable innings. In a series that was hanging in the balance, that kind of return can change everything downstream.