Bulls rally from 6-1 down, beat Stripers on Levins homer

Durham turned a 5-0 deficit and then a 6-1 hole into a 7-6 victory over Gwinnett, the kind of road comeback that can change the tone of a series and maybe the next stop on the trip. The Bulls finished a second straight series with a win, and they did it by surviving an afternoon that kept asking whether the bullpen, the lineup and the roster movement behind it all could hold together long enough to finish the job.

The day started with a major-league rehab assignment from Joe Boyle, and the Stripers put Durham in trouble immediately. Boyle lasted just 1 2/3 innings on 54 pitches and allowed five runs, forcing the Bulls to spend most of the game climbing out of a deep early deficit. Durham finally started the push in the fourth inning against Anthony Molina, when Blake Sabol lined a one-hop double that drove in a run and Tony Santa Maria followed with a two-run single to cut into the margin. By then, the Bulls had at least made the game feel reachable.

Cooper Kinney kept the comeback alive in the fifth with an RBI single that pulled Durham within 6-5, setting up the swing that decided the night. In the eighth inning, Tatem Levins stepped in and delivered the biggest hit of the day, a two-run opposite-field homer that put Durham in front for the first time. That was the shot that flipped the result from a rally story into a series-clinching road win, and it came from a player taking full advantage of a late-game chance.

The final inning made the finish even more revealing. Dominic Niman, added from High-A Bowling Green earlier in the day, made his Triple-A debut and handled the save chance after a one-out single and a two-out throwing error opened the door for Gwinnett. He still got the last outs and protected the one-run lead, giving Durham a victory built on production from across the system: Sabol and Santa Maria in the middle innings, Kinney setting the table for the late surge, Levins supplying the knockout blow and Niman closing it down. For a club trying to stack series wins, that sequence mattered as much as the final score.