Tacoma rallies with two ninth-inning runs to beat Salt Lake 4-3

Tacoma turned a tight opener into a 4-3 walk-off win over Salt Lake on Tuesday night in Tacoma, Washington, scoring twice in the ninth inning to open its four-week homestand with its third walk-off victory of the season. Will Klein earned the win for the Rainiers, while Michael Darrell-Hicks took the loss for the Bees.

The game stayed on a knife’s edge until Tacoma’s last turn at bat, which is exactly where the Rainiers have been at their best this season. Chad Stevens kept the home side alive throughout the night by homering for the third straight game, a surge that helped carry Tacoma into the final inning with the chance to finish the job. When the Rainiers pushed across two runs in the ninth, the opener flipped from a one-run game into another late Tacoma celebration.

For Salt Lake, the defeat was the kind that keeps piling up on a road club trying to survive the last three outs. The Bees were within a swing of stealing the opener, but the final inning again decided everything, turning a competitive night into another loss that felt expensive because of how little separated the clubs. Tacoma entered at 22-30 and Salt Lake at 23-28, so the result also mattered in the Pacific Coast League standings, where one late frame can move a series and change the tone of an entire week.

The shape of the loss is what will linger for Salt Lake. A 4-3 final says the Bees were in the game all the way through; a walk-off finish says the closing sequence broke at the worst possible moment. In Triple-A, where bullpens are constantly shuffled by call-ups, injuries and transaction traffic, that kind of ending can be a warning sign about who is available to protect a lead, and whether the club can execute in the inning that matters most.