Hinds, Chavis homer as Louisville clinches series in wild win over Indianapolis

Rece Hinds and Michael Chavis put themselves back at the center of the Reds conversation in one noisy night at Victory Field, powering Louisville to an 8-5 win over Indianapolis that clinched the series and gave the Bats a third straight victory over the Indians. Hinds drove in the first run with an RBI single, then added his fifth homer of the season in the fifth inning. Chavis answered with a sacrifice fly and later a two-run homer, giving him the team lead with five home runs of his own.

The result mattered because Louisville did not win this one cleanly. The clubs combined for nine errors, the most in an Indians game since at least 2005 and more than Indianapolis had ever committed in a game since its previous high of eight miscues on May 21, 2022, against Toledo. In that kind of game, power and patience can carry just as much weight as crisp defense, and Louisville got enough of both to finish the job and improve to 8-6. Indianapolis fell to 3-11.

Tejay Antone supplied the final, and perhaps most intriguing, note. The 32-year-old right-hander shut down Indianapolis in the ninth for his first save of the 2026 Triple-A season and his first Louisville save since 2021. Antone entered the game with a 1-0 record, a 0.00 ERA, four appearances, 4.2 innings and six strikeouts, and the Bats needed every bit of that stability after a game that kept threatening to turn on one bad throw or one missed read.

Sam Benschoter also helped steady the night for Louisville, striking out three over two scoreless innings. That bridge to Antone mattered because the Bats were trying to protect a lead in a series-clinching game on the road, the kind of spot that can say more about bullpen depth than a standard box score ever does.

Indianapolis still had its own individual highlights in defeat. Davis Wendzel launched his second homer of the season, a 405-foot solo shot in the eighth, while Alika Williams extended his hitting streak to nine games. Esmerlyn Valdez also pushed his on-base streak to 14 games, and Héctor Rodríguez arrived with a 14-game on-base streak of his own to open the season. But the night belonged to Louisville’s power bats and to Antone, whose return to the save column gave the Bats a clean finish to an ugly, important win.