Saints survive Iowa rally, tie franchise record with 18 series homers

The Saints did enough damage in the first five innings to make a historic Sunday look routine, then spent the ninth inning proving nothing is routine when power starts carrying a club. St. Paul beat Iowa 8-7 at CHS Field on May 3, tying a franchise record with 18 home runs in the series, but the finish was anything but easy.

St. Paul built a 7-0 lead behind two runs in the first, a four-run third that included a three-run homer, and another run in the fifth. That was the identity of the series in one snapshot: one burst after another, the kind of offense that can bury a game before the bullpen ever has to hold the line. The Saints had already hit seven homers in the previous game of the set, matching a CHS Field record and tying the third-most home runs in a game in franchise history. The 18-homer total for the series matched a franchise mark and underscored that this was not a one-night fluke.

Iowa kept swinging anyway. The Cubs got on the board in the sixth on Pedro Ramírez’s RBI double, then made it a game in the seventh when Hayden Cantrelle, Justin Dean and Ramírez each delivered RBI hits with two outs. Kevin Alcántara kept the pressure on with a homer in the eighth, his third straight game with a home run, and B.J. Murray’s two-run single in the ninth brought the tying and go-ahead runs onto the bases. By then, the Saints’ cushion had shrunk to the point where every pitch mattered.

Christian Roa opened the ninth by walking the first two batters he faced, forcing St. Paul into survival mode in front of 4,948 fans. Grant Hartwig helped finish the save situation, and the Saints escaped with the win after a game that looked decided hours earlier. The club was hitting Jordan Wicks, the Chicago Cubs’ Major League rehab assignment pitcher, for the second time in the series, and St. Paul kept punishing mistakes enough to make the matchup tilt early.

That is the real question after this stretch: how sustainable is it? The Saints entered the game as Minor League Baseball’s most prolific home run team, and the numbers say the power surge is real. But Triple-A also has a way of punishing teams that assume a 7-0 lead is safe. St. Paul’s bats carried it again; the late innings reminded everyone why leads still need to be protected.