Aviators Rout Comets 9-3, Clinch Six-Game Series at Las Vegas

Colby Thomas, the 25-year-old right fielder who debuted for the Athletics last June as the organization's No. 2 prospect, launched two solo home runs estimated at 425-plus feet Sunday to anchor Las Vegas' 9-3 series-clinching win over Oklahoma City at Las Vegas Ballpark.

Thomas connected in the second inning to tie the game at 1-1 and then bookended his afternoon with another solo shot in the eighth, his second long ball of the game accounting for the Aviators' final run of the contest. The two-homer performance was the marquee moment inside a Las Vegas lineup that never let Oklahoma City breathe: the Aviators scored 43 runs across the six-game set, averaging more than seven per game while sending the Comets home on the wrong end of a 4-2 series result.

The game's decisive swing came in the seventh inning. Henry Bolte, another Athletics outfield prospect on the Las Vegas roster, belted a three-run homer that shoved the margin well beyond reach and capped a sequence in which Las Vegas scored in five of nine innings. Drew Swift had done earlier damage with a two-run single in the fourth that extended a one-run lead to three. Oklahoma City never recovered. The Comets finished with a season-low three hits, a stunning suppression for a lineup that generated nine home runs elsewhere in the series.

Nick Senzel's first-inning sacrifice fly scored Ryan Fitzgerald to give Oklahoma City an early 1-0 edge, and the Comets briefly retied the game in the third when Zach Ehrhard crossed on an error. But Las Vegas answered both times. Joey Meneses followed Thomas' second-inning homer with an RBI double to put the Aviators ahead 2-1, and Junior Pérez produced a run-scoring groundout in the third to restore the lead. Austin Gauthier hit Oklahoma City's lone late-game bright spot, a solo home run in the seventh that was also his first of the season, but with the Comets down by five it was only cosmetic.

For Las Vegas, the series total of 12 home runs underscored a team-wide power identity. For Thomas specifically, the two-homer clincher lands at a meaningful moment in his 2026 timeline. He broke into the majors on June 30 last season, arriving as a pinch-hitter against Tampa Bay and immediately flashing the arm that defines his defensive profile. The call-up came with 17 Triple-A home runs already on his ledger and 66 across 334 career minor league games. He returned to Las Vegas this spring, and Sunday's performance is exactly the kind of box score that shortens the wait for his next one. As a right-handed corner outfielder with demonstrated gap-to-gap power and an outfield arm the Athletics value, Thomas is the kind of player whose Triple-A production translates directly into roster conversations. Two 425-foot solo shots in a series clincher will generate those conversations again in Sacramento this week.