RailRiders fall in 12-inning thriller, Worcester sets franchise innings record

Allan Castro ended it with one swing, and it sent Scranton/Wilkes-Barre home after a night that had already stretched into Worcester Red Sox history. Castro’s two-run homer to right in the 12th gave Worcester a 10-8 win Thursday at Polar Park, sealing the longest game by innings in WooSox history and turning a game the RailRiders nearly stole into a crushing road loss.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre had reason to believe it could survive. Duke Ellis put the RailRiders in front early with his first homer of the season, a 356-foot three-run shot in the second inning, and he finished 4-for-5 with a walk, falling a triple shy of the cycle. That burst pushed the RailRiders ahead 3-1, but Worcester kept answering and slowly dragged the game back toward even, the kind of pressure that makes a 12-inning game feel longer than the box score says.

The WooSox tied it in the second, then kept piling on. Anthony Seigler, a former Yankees farmhand, added a solo homer. Tsung-Che Cheng delivered a sacrifice fly. Matt Lloyd went deep as Worcester built an 8-4 cushion and looked ready to control the night. Braiden Ward kept giving them extra outs and extra stress, reaching base three times and stealing two bases while also making a second standout catch at the wall. His 11th hit by pitch of the season led the league at that point, another reminder of how often he was in the middle of the action.

That is where the RailRiders made the game interesting. Oswaldo Cabrera doubled in the ninth, scored on a Seth Brown triple, and Brown came home on a balk. Then Kenedy Corona, in his first RailRiders hit, ripped an RBI double to tie it 7-7 and force extras. Both clubs scored once in the 11th, but the game finally turned in the 12th, when Nathan Hickey, who had already been used in pitching emergencies four times this season, worked a scoreless inning and set up Castro’s walk-off shot.

Edinson Duran took the loss after being asked to cover the final 2.1 innings, a heavy lift in a game that already had the feel of a series hinge. The RailRiders had won 9-7 in 10 innings the night before, so this one flipped the momentum right back to Worcester, which entered the night tied with Syracuse atop the International League East and one game ahead of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. After 12 innings and 30 runs, the series was still alive, but the cost of this kind of marathon is real: arms get burned, benches get thinned, and one lost swing can shape the rest of the week.