Cornelio fans nine as Red Wings top Bisons, move above .500

Rochester got the one result it needed most, and it came with weather that looked more like three different seasons than a single ballgame. The Red Wings beat the Buffalo Bisons 6-4 on Sunday afternoon at ESL Ballpark, moved to 11-10, and finished the day back above .500 after a homestand that kept swinging almost as often as the forecast.

Riley Cornelio gave Rochester the kind of start that can steady a club’s week. The 25-year-old right-hander from Honolulu, Hawaii, worked 5.0 innings, struck out nine and earned the win in just his fourth start of the season. A Washington Nationals draft pick in the seventh round in 2022 out of TCU, Cornelio entered the game with a 2.70 ERA and 18 strikeouts. After Sunday, he was 2-0 with a 2.45 ERA, and the performance fit the profile of a pitcher who is beginning to turn bat-missing into a real Triple-A calling card.

The offense did not have to force anything. Both clubs were quiet until the fourth inning, then Rochester finally opened the door and walked through it. Andrew Pinckney delivered the key swing with a bases-loaded single that drove in two runs, and Dylan Crews kept the pressure on by going 2-for-4 and scoring twice. Rochester did not need a barrage of home runs to separate itself; it used traffic, contact and timely hits to cash in when the Bisons put runners on the bases.

That made the final two-run margin feel bigger than the score suggested. Buffalo stayed close, but Rochester answered after a 6-3 loss on Saturday and avoided letting the six-game set drift toward a frustrating finish. The Red Wings had already shown earlier in the homestand that they could respond, too. After a 5-3 loss on April 14, they bounced back the next day with a 6-3 win powered by Crews’ 382-foot homer, Riley Adams’ three-run blast and a bullpen that kept Buffalo off the board over the final 4.2 innings.

The series at ESL Ballpark also carried the backdrop of Jackie Robinson Day and the club’s Thursday-night Rochester Plates identity, but Sunday’s result was about something more immediate: a team moving in the right direction. Rochester left the field with a winning record, a starter whose strikeouts are piling up, and a lineup that showed it can make one good inning carry a game against a division rival.