Durham’s early burst and late defensive stand beat Round Rock 3-2

Durham got just enough from its first inning and then let the pitching and defense do the rest, edging Round Rock 3-2 on Wednesday night at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The Bulls scored all three runs with two outs in the opening frame, when Dom Keegan, Logan Davidson and Raynel Delgado strung together consecutive singles against Austin Gomber to turn a quiet start into a 3-0 lead.

That burst mattered because Round Rock never fully escaped the hole. The Express trimmed the margin and kept the game tense into the late innings, but Durham’s pitchers kept the traffic light and the Bulls avoided the kind of extended inning that could have flipped the night. Joe Boyle, in his first rehab assignment appearance after being sent to Durham, set the tone with two hitless innings, striking out four, walking one and throwing 31 pitches, 20 for strikes. Andrew Wantz followed with two more hitless frames, and KC Hunt, Luis Guerrero and Evan Reifert handled the final four innings.

The decisive defensive sequence came in the eighth, when Cam Cauley singled and then advanced on a throwing error as Round Rock tried to extend the inning. Blake Sabol and the Durham defense got the play back under control in time, and Sabol’s tag prevented the tying run from scoring. It was the kind of clean, quick stop that can decide a Triple-A game, especially in a one-run finish where one misplay is often the difference between holding on and watching the lead disappear. Durham finished with three errors, including two throwing errors from Gavin Lux during his rehab stint, but the Bulls were sharp when the inning demanded it most.

Evan Reifert earned his first save of 2026 to close it out, giving Durham its first back-to-back home wins of the season and moving the Bulls to 13-22. Round Rock also entered the night at 13-22, and the tight score reflected how little separated the clubs once Durham’s early damage was in the books. The announced crowd was 3,623, and the series continued Thursday at 6:45 p.m. ET in a six-game homestand that has Round Rock in Durham for the first time on the Bulls’ 2026 home slate. For Boyle, the outing added another Durham chapter to his track record, one year after he helped finish the franchise’s seventh Triple-A no-hitter over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.