RailRiders fall one run short in ninth-inning comeback at Syracuse
Hamel took a no-hit bid into the sixth, but Syracuse flipped it in the eighth and held off a bases-loaded ninth to beat Scranton/Wilkes-Barre 4-3.
Dom Hamel put Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in position to steal the afternoon, but the RailRiders still left NBT Bank Stadium with a 4-3 loss because Syracuse found just enough offense in the eighth and then survived the ninth. Tyler Hardman’s RBI double in the first inning gave SWB a quick lead, yet the club could never turn that early edge into the cushion a game like this demanded.
That first inning was the missed chance that lingered. Marco Luciano reached on an error, Yanquiel Fernández walked and Hardman drilled the RBI double, but the RailRiders never cashed in for more after getting the jump. Hamel, meanwhile, was dealing. He carried a no-hitter into the sixth before JiHwan Bae finally broke it up with a double, and Francisco Alvarez’s walk set up Matt Rudick’s run-scoring single that tied it 1-1.
Yerry De Los Santos helped keep the game within reach by stranding inherited runners in the middle innings, but Syracuse eventually broke the deadlock in the eighth. Ryan Clifford laid down a safety squeeze to push the Mets in front, and Rudick followed with a two-run home run that made it 4-1. The blast was Rudick’s first since Sept. 15, 2024, when he was with Double-A Binghamton, and it turned a tense pitcher’s duel into a game Scranton/Wilkes-Barre had to chase all the way to the end. Dylan Ross later recorded his first save of the season for Syracuse.
The RailRiders made the ninth matter. Fernández reached on an error, Hardman walked and Ernesto Martínez Jr. brought home a run before Kenedy Corona lined an RBI double to cut it to 4-3. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre loaded the bases and had the tying and winning runs in play, but the final hit never came, leaving the RailRiders one swing short of a comeback that was suddenly very real.
The result handed Syracuse the series, four games to three, and left Scranton/Wilkes-Barre at 31-31 while the Mets moved to 33-30. After Friday’s no-hitter by Brendan Beck and Carson Coleman and Thursday’s walk-off loss on Rudick’s RBI single, the RailRiders spent the weekend living on both extremes: dominant, then blanked, then one big inning away from escaping with a split. The ninth-inning push looked like a lineup waking up, but it came after Syracuse had already spent the night proving it knew how to finish.
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