Space Cowboys outlast Bees 7-4 in 10, split six-game series

Salt Lake had every chance to turn a wild finale into a series win, but the 10th inning flipped everything. Sugar Land scored three times on two hits and two Bees errors Sunday at The Ballpark at America First Square in South Jordan, Utah, turning a 4-4 tie into a 7-4 Space Cowboys victory and forcing a split of the six-game set.

For nine innings, the game stayed on the edge of a rally. Sugar Land struck first on a two-out RBI single in the opening frame, then added to the lead when Colin Price launched a solo homer in the second, his second of the season. Salt Lake answered in the third through Jeimer Candelario, whose RBI brought the Bees back into it, but the inning ended with the bases loaded and a fuller comeback left on deck. That stranded opportunity set the tone for a night in which Salt Lake kept putting pressure on Sugar Land without landing the knockout blow.

The Bees finally broke through in the eighth, when Jose Siri pushed a run across with aggressive baserunning and Donovan Walton followed after Omar Martinez reached for his third hit of the game. Walton’s two-run homer tied it at 4-4 and gave Salt Lake exactly the opening it had been searching for. With the crowd energized and the game reset, the Bees looked poised to steal the finale after fighting back from a deficit that had held for most of the night.

Instead, the finish exposed the fine line between a resilient comeback and a costly collapse. Daniel Johnson, signed as a minor league free agent that same Sunday, delivered his first hit with Sugar Land in the 10th, a go-ahead double that started the decisive rally. The Space Cowboys kept the inning alive and cashed in again as Salt Lake’s defense cracked under the pressure, a reminder that extra innings at Triple-A often reward the cleaner club more than the hotter one.

The result fit the shape of the series. Sugar Land entered at 13-8 and Salt Lake at 8-13, and the clubs finished even after six games despite the Bees’ late surge. Salt Lake had gone 3-12 against Sugar Land in 2025 and 1-5 at home, while the Space Cowboys outscored them 87-54 and held them to a .213 average in that season series. The Bees have now gone 1-1 in extra innings this year, but Sunday’s loss was more about one broken 10th than a larger collapse, a rough ending for a team that had done enough to force the game into that spot in the first place.