Indianapolis stuns Omaha in 10 innings after Spence’s gem

Mitch Spence did everything a Triple-A club asks from a starter and still watched the win slip away. Omaha’s right-hander allowed just one hit over 6.2 innings, struck out four and turned in the Storm Chasers’ first quality start of the season, but Indianapolis rallied late and finished a 5-4, 10-inning escape at Victory Field on May 7.

Spence opened by retiring his first six batters, and Omaha backed him immediately with aggressive baserunning. Elih Marrero stole second before Luca Tresh came home on a double-steal sequence for a 1-0 lead in the second, then Josh Rojas launched a solo home run in the third to push it to 2-0. For most of the afternoon, that looked like enough cushion for a pitcher who entered the game with a 1-2 record and a 4.95 ERA.

Indianapolis started the slow grind against Spence in the third. A leadoff walk came before his first hit allowed, an RBI double that cut the margin to 2-1. Spence then settled back in and did not allow another hit, stringing together three more scoreless innings and retiring 13 straight batters from the third through the seventh. Even with that run, the game never fully felt finished.

That was the danger point Omaha could not solve. Once Spence left, the bullpen could not close the door. Indianapolis tied it in the seventh, then nudged ahead in the eighth on a pair of hits and a walk. Omaha answered in the ninth when Gavin Cross, the 2022 first-round pick by Kansas City and the No. 9 overall selection out of Virginia Tech, delivered a clutch two-run double to knot the score at 4-4.

The Storm Chasers could not survive the 10th. Rafael Flores Jr. ended it with a two-out RBI single, handing the win to Peter Lambert Bidois and the loss to Jose Cuas. Omaha finished with five hits and one error, Indianapolis with seven hits and one error, and the final line fit the broader problem exactly: Omaha got dominant starting pitching, made a late push, and still left Victory Field with a loss.

The result dropped Omaha to 15-20 and moved Indianapolis to 14-22. For a club trying to stabilize its late innings, this was the kind of game that lingers, because the starter did his job and the rest of the run prevention simply did not hold.