Reno Aces Clinch First Series Win on Late Solo Homers

Jean Walters, 24, and Aramis Garcia, 33, aren't the names Arizona evaluators circle when projecting the Aces' power contributors for 2026. On April 5, both refused to stay in the background.

The pair each connected off Albuquerque's Keegan Thompson in the late innings, with Garcia's decisive 405-foot blast proving the difference in a 3-2 Reno victory over the Isotopes. The win clinched the Aces' first series of the 2026 Triple-A season.

Walters, a switch-hitting second baseman from Matanzas, Cuba, who signed with Arizona as a minor league free agent and entered the year as a bench bat, struck first. With the game knotted at 1-1, he turned a 2-2 curveball from Thompson into his first Triple-A home run, pulling the ball down the right-field line at 102.6 mph and 399 feet. That exit velocity registers firmly in ranges evaluators flag as legitimate power output, notable for a 24-year-old still establishing himself at the top minor-league level.

Albuquerque refused to yield. Andrew Knizner answered with a leadoff solo shot in the bottom of the same frame, his first homer of the year, squaring the contest at 2-2.

That is where Garcia changed everything. Down 0-2 in the count with one out, the veteran catcher turned Thompson's sweeper into a line drive to the left-field stands: 105.3 mph off the bat, 405 feet of carry, and a 3-2 Reno lead that held. The blast ranked among the hardest-hit home runs by exit velocity and distance in Reno's young 2026 season. Garcia, who has logged big-league time with the Giants, Athletics, Reds, and Phillies before landing in Reno as a backup and leadership presence behind the plate, looked anything but a man simply managing the count on an 0-2 pitch.

Earlier in the contest, A.J. Vukovich's triple helped set up a go-ahead run for LuJames Groover, the Diamondbacks' No. 10 prospect, who also crossed the plate during Reno's rally. Gerardo Carrillo then closed the ninth with precision: a 1-2-3 inning, two strikeouts, and a clean finish to a tightly contested game.

Starter Yu-Min Lin's outing was less tidy. He issued a career-high six walks across 4.2 innings yet kept the game manageable long enough for the bullpen to take over. What the pitching staff did across the full six-game set is the more telling figure: Reno surrendered just 11 total runs across those six games, a franchise-matching low for a series of that length.

The series victory arrived in the first week of Triple-A play, when sample sizes are thin and clutch moments by backup catchers can be as random as they are thrilling. But two things from this stretch hold up under skeptical scrutiny. Carrillo's clean ninth and Reno's collective bullpen work point to real depth behind the starters. And the contact quality from Walters and Garcia, 102.6 and 105.3 mph respectively, was not a product of lucky bounces. Those numbers reflect hitters capable of inflicting damage at the highest minor-league level, regardless of where they sit in the organizational pecking order.