RailRiders erase five-run deficit, outslug Bisons 9-6 behind Jones

The RailRiders took a punch to the mouth in the first inning and never blinked. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre erased a five-run deficit, then kept landing cleaner, harder shots until a 9-6 win over Buffalo was in hand at PNC Field.

Buffalo opened with all nine hitters coming to the plate and scored five runs on three hits and an error. Riley Tirotta drove in the first run, Willie MacIver followed with a two-run single and an errant throw helped the inning keep snowballing. Jose Berrios, on a major-league injury rehab assignment for the Bisons, had the early lead in his back pocket, but it disappeared almost immediately when Spencer Jones launched a 345-foot solo homer in the bottom of the first. Jones, the Yankees’ No. 6 prospect, had already shown why his power changes games; that shot was his sixth homer of the season.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre did not wait long to turn the pressure up again. In the second, Payton Henry, Duke Ellis and Duncan Pastore helped load the bases, and Jones came through again with a two-run single. That was the first sign the RailRiders were not just trading swings with Buffalo, but wearing down the starter and forcing the game onto their terms. By the third, Seth Brown finished the catch-up job with a two-run homer that tied the score at 5-5 and flipped the temperature of the night.

The decisive swing came in the fifth, when Henry lined a three-run opposite-field homer to right off Adam Macko and pushed Scranton/Wilkes-Barre ahead 8-5. Henry finished 3-for-5 with a homer, a double, three RBI and two runs scored, giving the RailRiders a middle-order lift that matched Jones’ thunder. Jones added another homer later and finished 3-for-5 with two home runs, four RBI and two runs scored, while Brown’s shot gave him a 2-for-5 line with two RBI and two runs.

Berrios lasted four innings and threw 70 pitches before handing off to a RailRiders bullpen that kept the night from tilting back Buffalo’s way. The Bisons scratched out one run in the eighth, but Jones answered with his second homer to restore the three-run cushion. For a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre club that entered at 15-12 and opened the season with nine Yankees 40-man players, five top-30 prospects and 15 players with major-league service time, the win looked less like a wild shootout than proof of depth, poise and a lineup built to recover fast.