Bisons erupt early, rout IronPigs 11-2 in series finale

The number that told the story was 13. Buffalo scored 13 runs in the fifth inning across two games in the series, and Sunday’s five-run outburst turned an 11-2 finale at Coca-Cola Park into a clear statement about how quickly the IronPigs could be put away.

Buffalo struck first with two runs in the opening inning on RBI singles from RJ Schreck and Carlos Mendoza, putting Lehigh Valley in chase mode before the afternoon had a chance to settle. Bryse Wilson could not stop the slide from there. After the Bisons went quiet for a few innings, Schreck opened the fifth inning surge with a two-run double, and Willie MacIver followed with a three-run homer that blew the game open.

Lehigh Valley got one brief jolt from Bryan De La Cruz, who led off the bottom of the fifth with his fifth homer of the season and became the active team leader in long balls. It was the IronPigs’ loudest swing of the day, but it did not change the shape of the game. Buffalo kept forcing the issue, and Lehigh Valley never found a sustained response to the early deficit or the big inning that followed.

The IronPigs’ second run came in the seventh on Paul McIntosh’s RBI groundout, but by then Buffalo had already seized full control. In the eighth, Charles McAdoo drove in two runs with a base hit, and Schreck and MacIver each added RBI singles as the Bisons pushed the margin to 11-2. The late innings only widened the gap between a lineup that kept stacking quality at-bats and one that could not string together enough contact to make the scoreboard feel competitive.

Josh Fleming earned the win with five innings of one-run ball, while Wilson took the loss after allowing seven runs, six earned, in 4.2 innings. The defeat left both clubs at 19-20 after splitting the first five games of the six-game set, with Buffalo taking the finale and leaving Lehigh Valley to sort through a series defined by one inning that kept tilting everything. The IronPigs head to Rochester for a six-game road trip beginning Tuesday at ESL Ballpark after Monday’s off-day.