Durham’s six-run third lifts Bulls past Sounds, 7-4
A six-run third, capped by Tatem Levins' grand slam, sent Nashville to a 7-4 loss and turned a comeback night into a chase.
The game changed in a blink when Durham sent 11 hitters to the plate in the third inning and buried Nashville with six runs, including Tatem Levins’ grand slam. What had looked like a manageable opener at First Horizon Park became a 7-4 loss for the Sounds, and one crooked frame did all the damage.
Easton McGee had already shown he could escape trouble once. After allowing the first two batters to reach in the first, he helped strand a runner with a double play and kept Nashville from falling behind early. The third inning was different. The first four Durham hitters reached, the rally kept rolling, and Levins finished it by clearing the bases to push the Bulls ahead 6-0. McGee took the loss after giving up six earned runs in 3.0 innings, a start that swung the night before Nashville could settle in.
Ty Johnson turned that cushion into control for Durham. He worked four scoreless innings to earn the win, and John Rooney finished the last two innings to collect the save. The Bulls ended their nine-game losing streak with the victory, one that also reshaped the first-half race around them. Durham’s release said the win knocked Nashville out of first place with eight games left before the break, dropping the Sounds to third while Memphis moved ahead and Rochester slipped into second.
Nashville did show some life, mostly through Luke Adams. The Brewers’ 2022 12th-round pick doubled in the fifth and then launched a two-run homer in the sixth, his sixth of the season, to finish 2-for-4 with two RBI. His swing briefly narrowed the gap, but the Sounds never fully erased the third-inning damage.
There was at least enough from the back end of the pitching staff to keep the loss from turning uglier. Kaleb Bowman covered 4.0 innings in relief and allowed one earned run, while Junior Fernández threw two hitless innings and struck out three. That effort suggested Nashville’s issue was not a blanket collapse, but a brief, costly break in execution that Durham exploited fully. For Milwaukee, the concern is less a broad depth alarm than the reminder that one bad inning can still flip a Triple-A night and a standings race at the same time.
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