Columbus strings together runs, hands Iowa third straight loss

Columbus did not need one crooked number to take control. It chipped away inning by inning, and that steady pressure was enough to send Iowa to a 9-6 loss Tuesday evening at Principal Park and drop the Cubs into a third straight defeat.

Iowa grabbed the first punch when Pedro Ramirez lined an RBI single in the opening inning. That should have bought the Cubs some breathing room. Instead, Columbus answered in three consecutive innings, then added another run in the fifth to build a 7-1 lead and force Iowa into chase mode for the rest of the night.

That middle-inning stretch was the difference. The Clippers scored three runs in the third and three more in the fourth, a sequence that kept the game from ever settling into Iowa’s hands. The Cubs never fully vanished, but once Columbus stacked those innings, every Iowa comeback attempt had to climb over a growing deficit. In Triple-A, that is how games unravel: not always with one blow, but with a lineup that keeps finding a way to score before the home club can answer back.

The loss pushed Iowa to 15-18 and lifted Columbus to 18-16. It also sharpened the urgency around a club that has now lost three in a row, with little margin for another flat stretch in the middle of a game. Ramirez gave Iowa a clean opening, but the rest of the night belonged to Columbus, which controlled the tempo and made the Cubs spend too much energy trying to recover instead of building on the early lead.

This matchup has already been volatile. Columbus beat Iowa 12-8 on April 19, and Iowa had its own response in the rivalry with a 9-3 win on May 25, 2025. But on this night, the Clippers’ ability to produce across multiple innings mattered more than the first-inning spark from Iowa.

The teams were back at Principal Park the next day, and for Iowa the task was obvious. Stop the inning-to-inning bleed, or another winnable game would keep slipping away.