Tulsa erupts for seven homers, routs San Antonio 17-7 in opener

Five lead changes in six innings made this look like a tense opener until Tulsa turned one mislocated pitch after another into a damage report. The Drillers hit seven home runs and beat the San Antonio Missions 17-7 on Tuesday night at ONEOK Field, a result that snapped Tulsa’s three-game losing streak and pushed the Drillers to 15-7 while San Antonio fell to 5-17.

What separated the clubs was not the early scoreboard drama, but how Tulsa kept punishing mistakes. The Drillers finished with 15 hits and six different players went deep, with Chris Newell leading the barrage by homering twice. Tulsa’s power surge made the final margin look more lopsided than the first six innings suggested, but the home club kept answering each San Antonio push with a louder one of its own.

San Antonio did plenty of damage early. Ethan Salas drove a three-run homer in the fourth inning, extending his home-run streak to three straight games and giving the Missions a 6-4 lead at that point. The Missions finished with a season-high 11 hits, and for stretches they looked capable of matching Tulsa swing for swing. But every time San Antonio created momentum, the Drillers found a faster way to erase it.

The decisive stretch came against Eric Yost, who finally recorded an out in the fifth inning for the first time this season but also gave up the shots that broke the game open. Los Angeles Dodgers prospects Zyhir Hope and Josue De Paula both homered off Yost in that frame, with Hope’s two-run blast and De Paula’s solo shot forcing him from the game as Tulsa seized control. De Paula and Hope, identified as the Dodgers’ top two prospects, were central to a lineup that never stopped applying pressure.

The flood continued in the sixth when a catcher interference call extended the inning and set up Jake Gelof’s go-ahead three-run homer. Newell followed immediately with his second homer of the night, and by then the Missions’ bullpen had lost any chance of containing the inning-to-inning damage. The clubs had already played a wild series in Tulsa earlier this month, including San Antonio’s 11-9 win on April 3 after erasing a 9-2 Drillers lead, and this opener carried the same volatility until Tulsa’s power finally overwhelmed it. The second game of the six-game set was scheduled for Wednesday at 12:05 p.m. CDT.