Ehrhard homers twice as Comets edge Express 5-4 to snap skid

Zach Ehrhard did more than start fast Thursday night. His two solo homers gave Oklahoma City its first two hits, and when Round Rock answered with a four-run fourth, the Comets still had enough to survive a 5-4 finish at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. That is the kind of performance that matters in Triple-A: it can flip a game, steady a lineup and push a player’s stock higher all in one night.

Ehrhard opened the scoring with a solo shot in the first and came right back with another in the third, matching the career high he had already set last June at Double-A Portland in Altoona. The first homer was also Oklahoma City’s third leadoff homer of the season and only its second at home. For a club trying to keep pressure on the Dodgers’ depth chart, that is the cleanest possible signal from a young hitter: early damage, no empty at-bats, and power that showed up before Round Rock could settle in.

The Express did not go quietly. They flipped the game with a four-run fourth inning built on five hits, including a two-run double from John Taylor. River Ryan, who started for Oklahoma City, worked 6.0 innings and matched his career high while throwing a career-high 96 pitches, but the fourth inning turned the night into a test of how much the Comets could absorb after Ehrhard’s early punch.

They answered in the fifth. Ehrhard added an infield single, Alek Thomas followed with a two-out single and Oklahoma City went back in front 5-4. From there, the bullpen finished the job, keeping Round Rock scoreless over the final five innings. The Express loaded the bases in the eighth, but Wyatt Mills closed it with a 1-2-3 ninth for his fourth save of the season.

The win snapped a two-game skid, gave Oklahoma City its first victory of the six-game set, and kept the season series razor-thin. It was the ninth one-run decision in 15 meetings between the clubs, and seven of the nine games in Oklahoma City had been decided by a single run. With the Comets homering in nine of their last 10 games and totaling 19 long balls since May 24, Ehrhard’s night looked less like a one-off and more like another data point in a lineup that keeps finding power at the right time. On a night when Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Evan Phillips began a rehab assignment in Oklahoma City, Ehrhard made his own case impossible to miss.