Tibbs’ walk-off homer caps Comets' 10th-inning comeback win

James Tibbs III turned a grind into a statement. His two-run homer on the first pitch of the bottom of the 10th gave the Oklahoma City Comets a 5-4 walk-off win over the Sacramento River Cats on Thursday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, capping a comeback that started with the game slipping away and ended with one swing from a 23-year-old prospect under pressure.

Oklahoma City trailed 3-1 entering the ninth, but the first four batters reached and the inning changed fast. Taylor Young delivered a run-scoring single to cut the deficit to one, then Austin Gauthier worked a bases-loaded, full-count walk to force in the tying run. Sacramento briefly pushed back in the 10th with a sacrifice fly, but the Comets answered immediately when Tibbs jumped the first pitch he saw and drove it out to left.

The win mattered as much as the finish. It snapped Oklahoma City’s three-game losing streak, gave the club its first extra-inning victory of the season and its second walk-off win overall, and came against a Sacramento team that had already taken the first two games of the series, 10-1 on Tuesday and 6-4 on Wednesday. The Comets entered the day at 38-32, Sacramento at 41-27, with Oklahoma City sitting in third place overall and still chasing the league leaders during Game No. 71 of 150 and the first-half’s 71st game.

Sacramento had built its early edge with power, blasting two home runs in the first two innings to go up 3-0. Oklahoma City got on the board when Zach Ehrhard singled home a run in the fifth, then waited until the ninth to put together the kind of traffic that can flip a game in Triple-A in a matter of minutes. That late pressure, followed by Tibbs’ finish, made the comeback feel less like a rally and more like a test the Comets passed.

Tibbs’ numbers explain why his bat is starting to carry real weight. The left-handed hitter from Atlanta, a 2024 first-round pick by the San Francisco Giants out of Florida State, reached 20 home runs for the season and bumped his RBI total to 61 after the walk-off blast. His line now stands at .297/.413/.602, production that looks less like a nice month and more like a prospect forcing attention every time he steps in.