Comets blow six-run lead, fall 9-7 to Bees at home

Oklahoma City had a six-run lead at home and still walked away stunned. The Comets led 7-1 after five innings Tuesday night at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, only to watch the Salt Lake Bees score eight straight runs over the final four frames and steal a 9-7 win.

The game turned after Oklahoma City built what looked like a safe cushion. Ryan Fitzgerald opened the scoring with a leadoff homer in the first, only the second leadoff blast of the season for the Comets and their first at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. Chuckie Robinson added a second-inning RBI groundout, then Ryan Ward blew the roof off the rally in the fifth with a three-run homer inside a five-run inning that pushed the lead to 7-1. Ward reached base four times and has six homers and six RBI over his last two games.

From there, the offense disappeared. Oklahoma City managed just one hit after the fifth inning, despite drawing a season-high 11 walks, and the Bees kept chipping away until Chris Taylor’s RBI single tied it in the eighth. Salt Lake completed the comeback in the ninth, when Omar Martinez doubled as part of a two-run frame that put the game out of reach. The Comets finished with five hits, 12 strikeouts and 10 runners left on base.

The loss snapped Oklahoma City’s four-game winning streak and stretched its home skid to five games. More jarring was the size of the collapse: the six-run cushion was the club’s largest lead ever lost in a defeat this season. The last time Oklahoma City dropped a home game after leading by six was July 28, 2022, against Sugar Land, and the last six-run lead lost anywhere came Aug. 6, 2025, at El Paso.

There was also rehab intrigue in a night that drew 5,004 fans and started at 6:08 p.m. Kiké Hernández began his major league rehab assignment and went 1-for-3 with a ground-rule double and a run scored in his first affiliated game since Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. Brusdar Graterol made his second rehab appearance, allowed two runs on three hits in two-thirds of an inning and threw 27 pitches, 18 for strikes. For a team trying to keep pace in the PCL, the warning was unmistakable: scoring early is one thing, finishing is another.