Hunt, Heasley lift Bulls to 4-3 win, split road series

KC Hunt and Jon Heasley turned a tense Sunday at PNC Field into a useful snapshot of Durham’s pitching depth, carrying the Bulls to a 4-3 win over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and a split of the six-game road series.

Hunt, a 25-year-old left-hander acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers in late March, made only his third appearance for Durham and earned his first victory in the Tampa Bay organization. He worked around a leadoff error in the first inning, then carried a shutout into the fifth and retired 12 straight batters as the Bulls stayed in control against a RailRiders club that entered the day at 9-5. For a Durham staff still settling into April, it was the kind of outing that did more than cover innings.

Heasley added the other half of the story. Signed by the Rays as a free agent earlier in the week and assigned to Durham on April 11, the 29-year-old right-hander threw three scoreless innings on only 20 pitches. In a game that stayed tight until the end, that efficiency mattered as much as the zeroes. It gave Durham a clean bridge to the late innings and gave the Rays another look at a pitcher whose track record already includes an MLB debut with Kansas City in 2021.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre made the Bulls work for it. Ali Sánchez powered the RailRiders with his third home run of the season, and the home side kept pressure on into the ninth. Spencer Jones brought Scranton/Wilkes-Barre within a run with a sacrifice fly, but the tying run was stranded on third as Cam Hill finished the job for his save.

Durham’s offense did enough against a staff that had entered the day with a 4-10 Bulls team on one side and a home club opening its first set of the season on the other. Raynel Delgado, Logan Davidson and Carlos Colmenarez all contributed, and Victor Mesa Jr. delivered the swing that mattered most, launching a solo homer in the eighth for the insurance run that held up.

The weekend had already swung back and forth. Durham split Saturday’s doubleheader, winning 4-2 before dropping the nightcap 9-5, so the finale prevented the road trip from tilting into a series loss. Instead, the Bulls left Moosic with a split and a better read on two pitchers who could be more than stopgaps if Tampa Bay needs reinforcements later.