Toledo blanks St. Paul 1-0, Saints salvage lone hit in ninth

Gabby Gonzalez’s one-out single in the ninth inning kept St. Paul from joining an unwanted no-hit club, but it did nothing to hide how thoroughly Toledo controlled the game in a 1-0 home-opening win.

Lael Lockhart set the tone immediately for the Mud Hens, retiring the first 14 Saints hitters and rolling through 5.0 hitless, shutout innings. Ricky Vanasco finished the job, working 1.2 innings for the save with five strikeouts as Toledo allowed only one hit and five baserunners in all. The only run came in the first, when Max Clark opened with a single, stole second, and later scored on Hao-Yu Lee’s RBI single to left-center after Eduardo Valencia moved the inning along.

St. Paul’s ninth-inning single was the lone crack in a lineup that never seriously threatened. The Saints had been held hitless through eight innings, and the best earlier opening came in the eighth, when Ryan Kreidler and Kyler Fedko drew back-to-back walks and the club stole second and third before Aaron Sabato struck out to end the inning. Gonzalez finally broke through in the ninth, but the comeback never advanced past that lone swing.

The loss was the sixth straight for St. Paul and pushed the offense into a stark historical lane. The Saints were one-hit for the fifth time in Triple-A franchise history, and their only nine-inning no-hitter against them had come on April 13, 2022, against Indianapolis. That kind of profile is more than a one-night nuisance for a lineup still struggling to string together baserunners, especially against pitching that missed bats and avoided damage from the start.

There was no shortage of defensive help around the mound, either. Max Clark’s nifty catch in center field helped frame a game that was defined by clean work in the field and almost no offense at the plate. For St. Paul, the single from Gonzalez prevented the full no-hitter headline, but the more pressing story remained the same: the Saints did not create enough traffic, and Toledo made sure that one run was all it needed.