Kerry quality start, Mancini grand slam power Salt Lake past Tacoma

Trey Mancini turned a tight game into a loud one with a 404-foot grand slam in the fifth inning, and Brett Kerry supplied the kind of length that lets a Triple-A club breathe. Salt Lake beat Tacoma 8-3 on Thursday night at The Ballpark at America First Square, taking control with a six-run inning and then letting Kerry’s quality start carry the rest.

Kerry did not waste time settling in. He retired Tacoma in order to open the game and allowed just one baserunner through the first three innings, building a cushion for a Bees lineup that kept applying pressure. By the time he was done, the right-hander had worked 6.1 innings, allowed five hits and two earned runs, walked two and struck out six. It was his first quality start of the 2026 season and his 13th as a Bee.

Salt Lake gave Kerry an early lead in the third, when Christian Moore capped a string of three straight singles with an RBI knock. The game broke open in the fifth, and it happened with two outs, the kind of inning that usually tells you more about a lineup than a scoreboard does. Denzer Guzman singled in two runs, a walk loaded the bases, and Mancini unloaded them. His grand slam into the left-center seats flipped the game from competitive to effectively out of reach, turning a one-run edge into a 7-0 lead.

Tacoma did not go quietly. Colin Davis accounted for all three Rainiers runs with two homers, a two-run shot in the seventh and a solo drive in the ninth, but the damage was too little and too late. Donovan Walton added Salt Lake’s final run with a sacrifice fly in the seventh, and the Bees bullpen finished off the job after Kerry exited.

The offensive spread mattered as much as the power. All nine Salt Lake hitters reached base safely, and the top three batters in the order each produced multi-hit games. That kind of lineup depth is what keeps a hot night from feeling like a fluke. It also gives roster-watchers something real to chew on, because a club does not just stumble into an 8-3 win with one swing and one long outing unless the pieces are pushing in the same direction.

Kerry, a fifth-round pick by the Los Angeles Angels in 2021 out of South Carolina and a native of Clemmons, North Carolina, even collected top honors in the ballpark’s Talent Show Night promotion. More important for Salt Lake, he helped push the Bees to 6-3 on the homestand and into a 2-1 series lead over Tacoma, the sort of complete win that can change the tone of a series fast.