Comets Fall 3-1 to Isotopes Despite Strong Late-Inning Threat

Zach Ehrhard, the Dodgers' No. 21 prospect per Baseball America, put Oklahoma City on the board in the first inning of his Triple-A debut at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark — but the Comets couldn't build on that early advantage and dropped their 2026 season opener 3-1 to the Albuquerque Isotopes on Friday night.

The first inning unfolded like a promise. Hyeseong Kim led off with a single, and Ehrhard, a former Oklahoma State University standout making his first Triple-A appearance, laced an RBI single to give OKC a 1-0 lead before Albuquerque had generated anything meaningful in its own half. It felt like the start of something.

The second inning is where the game turned, and where the pattern that would define the entire night took hold.

Drew Avans erased the deficit with an RBI single. Then Cole Carrigg lined a two-run triple that put the Isotopes ahead 3-1. Two at-bats, three runs, all of it driven by extra-base contact. That triple was the hinge. Once Albuquerque's Tanner Gordon settled in after those two innings, Oklahoma City had no buffer and no clear mechanism to create one — because the Comets were never going to out-single their way back into this game.

That is the repeatable concern worth tracking into Game 2. Oklahoma City finished with five hits, every single one of them a single. No doubles. No home runs. In a one-run game, manufacturing runs through the gaps requires stringing three or four consecutive singles together, a proposition that gets harder by the inning as a pitcher finds rhythm. The gap between what Carrigg did to OKC's pitching and what the Comets could do to Albuquerque's wasn't talent — it was one swinging decision in the third slot of the scoring column.

The bullpen deserves genuine credit for keeping this game within reach at all. Oklahoma City's relievers held Albuquerque scoreless across the final seven frames, a performance good enough to win most Triple-A ballgames on most nights. Paul Gervase was particularly sharp, throwing two hitless innings with two strikeouts. Antoine Kelly and Keynan Middleton then followed with scoreless appearances in their respective Comets debuts. The trio gave the offense every opportunity to respond.

The offense left them stranded. The most damaging missed opportunity came in the seventh, when Oklahoma City loaded the bases with two outs. The energy at Chickasaw Bricktown shifted. It didn't last. The rally died right there, three runners left on base, deficit unchanged.

Ehrhard's individual debut still stands as a genuine bright spot: RBI single, a walk, a stolen base. The 23-year-old arrived in Oklahoma City with legitimate prospect billing, and Friday validated it. But one promising line in the one-hole can't compensate for a lineup-wide inability to generate extra-base damage.

For Game 2 on Saturday night, the concrete fix to watch isn't abstract. It is about which bat shows up capable of turning a first-pitch fastball into a gap double rather than a routine groundout. Kim is the right leadoff option; he did exactly what a leadoff hitter is supposed to do. Ehrhard proved he can drive in runs. What OKC needs somewhere in between is a hitter willing to swing for damage rather than contact when a runner is already in scoring position. If the Comets cycle through another nine innings collecting only singles with men on base, the seventh-inning strand becomes the story of the series, not just the story of Opening Night.

The bullpen already proved it can keep the Comets in games. Now the lineup has to give that effort something to show for it.