Bees rally past Tacoma 12-8 with late homers from Mancini, Wynns

Salt Lake turned a game that was careening out of control into a 12-8 win by leaning on veteran bats when the inning-by-inning swings were at their wildest. Tacoma blasted its way into the sixth, sent 11 hitters to the plate and scored six runs in the inning, but the Bees kept answering, with Trey Mancini and Austin Wynns delivering the punches that finally put the Rainiers away at The Ballpark at America First Square in South Jordan, Utah.

The finish gave Salt Lake a four-game winning streak, its longest of the season, and completed a 4-0 sweep of the final four games of the six-game series. It also left the Bees at 25-25 after a 9-3 homestand, their best stretch of the year in a 12-game run at home. In a Pacific Coast League race where Salt Lake sat fifth and 4.5 games behind Sacramento with 24 games left in the first half, the turnaround mattered as much as the result.

Mancini was right in the middle of it. He went 2-for-5 with two runs, a double, a home run and three RBIs, then delivered the biggest swing of the afternoon with a two-run homer in the eighth that pushed Salt Lake back in front for good. Wynns kept the pressure on throughout, finishing 2-for-5 with two runs, a homer and three RBIs after already giving the Bees a three-run blast earlier in the game. Bryce Teodosio added another jolt with his first home run of the season at any level.

The Bees built enough offense to absorb Tacoma’s surge, finishing with 27 combined hits and getting multihit games from five of their nine starters. That depth mattered after Tacoma’s sixth-inning burst erased the comfort Salt Lake had built earlier, but the home club kept finding answers and never let the game settle in the Rainiers’ favor.

The win also extended a striking mid-homestand reversal. Salt Lake had been beaten 13-1 earlier in the stretch, then outscored Tacoma 35-19 over the final four victories. Wynns had already set the tone a day earlier with a walk-off single in a 6-5, 10-inning win on Star Wars Night in front of 7,720 fans, the largest crowd of Salt Lake’s season, and Sunday’s 3-hour, 24-minute slugfest carried that momentum to the end of the homestand.