Reyes, Davidson power Lehigh Valley to 13-1 rout of RailRiders

Felix Reyes turned a quiet morning at Coca-Cola Park into a forceful argument for more attention. With two home runs, four RBIs and a front-end cushion for Tucker Davidson, Reyes helped Lehigh Valley flatten Scranton/Wilkes-Barre 13-1 on Wednesday and even the IronRail Series at 1-1.

The IronPigs did their damage from the start. Reyes opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the third, his seventh of the season, and Lehigh Valley never let the RailRiders settle in. Davidson answered with five shutout innings, allowing three hits and three walks while striking out four to improve to 3-1. The left-hander’s work extended his home scoreless-innings streak to 17 frames, a run of efficiency that matched the tone of the morning: quick, clean and one-sided.

The game broke open in the fourth, when Lehigh Valley sent 10 batters to the plate and scored five times. Liover Peguero delivered the biggest swing in that inning with a two-run double, Robert Moore added an RBI double, Christian Cairo singled home another run, and Reyes finished the frame with an RBI single to make it 7-0. By then, the RailRiders were already chasing the kind of deficit that makes every at-bat feel heavier and every defensive mistake more expensive.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre briefly got on the board in the sixth on Seth Brown’s solo homer, his second of the series and eighth of the season, but that was only a pause before Lehigh Valley finished the job in the eighth. Reyes launched his second homer of the day, his eighth of the year, Bryan De La Cruz followed with a homer against his former club, Moore tripled in two runs and later scored on a wild pitch, and Caleb Ricketts added an RBI single in a six-run inning that turned the final minutes into a runaway.

The numbers tell the larger story behind the scoreboard. Eight of nine Lehigh Valley hitters recorded at least one hit, and the club again showed the kind of depth that can make a Triple-A roster hard to contain when the middle of the order starts rolling. Reyes is now batting .337 with eight homers and 20 RBIs in Triple-A this season, production that keeps sharpening the case that his April 18 MLB debut was only the beginning of a longer conversation. After back-to-back double-digit blowouts, with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre winning 15-4 on Tuesday night before Lehigh Valley answered, the next test arrives Thursday at 6:45 p.m. with Dom Hamel slated for the RailRiders and Alan Rangel for the IronPigs.