Iggy Suarez earns first win as WooSox manager in 6-2 victory over Syracuse

Worcester’s 6-2 win over Syracuse meant more than a clean result at Polar Park. It gave Iggy Suarez his first victory as acting manager, and it came with enough substance to suggest the WooSox were not just riding a post-change adrenaline spike.

The biggest swing belonged to Nate Eaton. He finished with three hits and delivered a three-run home run, the kind of early damage that lets a Triple-A club relax into a game instead of chasing it. Worcester did not need a long offensive avalanche from there. Eaton’s blast did the heavy lifting, and the WooSox kept Syracuse from turning the afternoon into a back-and-forth test of nerves.

Eduardo Rivera supplied the other critical piece. He earned the win with three innings out of the bullpen, striking out six in a short, sharp outing that kept Worcester in control. That kind of spell is exactly what a team needs when it already has the lead: no wasted traffic, no inning that starts to tilt. Rivera’s work made the game feel manageable, not fragile.

That matters because Suarez’s first day at the controls came with real organizational weight attached. The Red Sox had just announced Chad Tracy’s promotion to interim manager in Boston, and Worcester’s dugout change sat inside the same chain of events. In a player-development system, those transitions are supposed to look seamless. Sunday gave the WooSox a version of that. Suarez got a win, the club finished the homestand on a high note, and the handoff from one level to the next did not spill onto the field.

The better read on this result is not that a new voice instantly changed everything. It is that Worcester looked settled enough to play clean, direct baseball around the change. Eaton’s production came early, Rivera shut the door in a brief outing, and Syracuse never found the opening it needed for a comeback. For a Triple-A team built around constant movement, that kind of control can be a better sign than a wild emotional surge.