RailRiders split wild doubleheader as Ornelas sparks comeback win
Bo Naylor's inside-the-park homer stunned the RailRiders in Game 1, but Jonathan Ornelas answered with a grand slam in the nightcap.
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre lived through two very different games in one night, and the split at Huntington Park felt bigger than a simple 1-1. The RailRiders were one swing away from stealing the opener before Bo Naylor’s inside-the-park homer ended a 9-8 extra-inning loss, then flipped the script by erasing a six-run deficit for an 8-6 win in Game 2 behind Jonathan Ornelas.
Game 1 had the kind of momentum swings that make a doubleheader feel like a stress test. Payton Henry singled in Oswaldo Cabrera for a 1-0 RailRiders lead in the first, but Columbus answered with two runs in the bottom half and kept trading blows with SWB all night. The RailRiders tied it in the fourth, both clubs hit solo homers in the fifth, and Kenedy Corona saved the game in the seventh with a diving catch that kept the score level. Then Scranton/Wilkes-Barre looked in control after pushing across three runs in the eighth for an 8-5 lead, only to see the Clippers answer with a run-scoring hit and a sacrifice fly before Naylor raced around the bases on the inside-the-park two-run walk-off. Tommy Mace earned the win and moved to 4-0, while Rafael Montero took the blown save and the loss.
Game 2 turned the emotional pressure the other way. The RailRiders fell behind 6-0 after three innings, but the offense finally exploded in a seven-run sixth, and Ornelas delivered the biggest swing of the night with a grand slam that cleared the deficit in one shot. MiLB’s video label marked it as his sixth home run of the 2026 season, and it came with Ernesto Martinez Jr., Kenedy Corona and Duke Ellis all crossing ahead of him. Ornelas entered the game hitting .339/.412/.488 with 3 homers, 17 RBIs and 5 steals in 39 games for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and the 26-year-old has the pedigree to match the production: a 2018 third-round pick by the Texas Rangers who debuted in the majors on Aug. 7, 2023.
The split came after Wednesday’s postponement because of inclement weather and kept the six-game series, running June 16-21, right in the middle of the fire. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre had opened the set with a 3-1 win on June 16 behind Brendan Beck’s nine strikeouts, and after surviving one of the wildest finishes of the Triple-A season, the RailRiders at least left Columbus with proof they could get hit hard and hit back harder.
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