ST. CLOUD, Minn. – For the second straight night the Bucks hopped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first inning, and for the second straight night, the Rox stormed back.
In the first inning, the Waterloo Bucks (5-15, 14-40) struck first as Liam Critchett doubled down the right field line scoring Caleb Corbin and Josh Patrick to take a 2-0 lead.
However, the St. Cloud Rox (15-7, 40-15) would strike right back as they scored four in the bottom half of the inning, headlined by a two-run home run to right field by Carson Keithley, hitting his first long ball of the season.
After a scoreless second from both sides, the Bucks would find themselves placing a run on the scoreboard in the third as Tynan Shahidi reached on an RBI fielder’s choice scoring Corbin from third to make it a one-run ballgame once again.
Yet again, it was St. Cloud storming back to double the Bucks third inning tally, plating two as Charlie Condon hit a sac fly, and Keithley collected another RBI on a single.
From there, the game went quiet and allowed pitching to dominate. Bucks starter Keaton Parker struck out six in a row en route to a seven-strikeout performance in five innings of work, as Nick Hyde for St. Cloud allowed seven hits in six innings himself.
It wasn’t until the eighth when the scoring picked up again, and it was yet again St. Cloud. The Rox would plate four more in the eighth on five hits allowed by Bucks reliever Blake Benson to put the game soundly away.
The Bucks would try their best to score in the ninth scoring just one as Tai Walton tripled that scored Corbin, who singled the previous at-bat, as it brought the ballgame to the final score of 10-4 as St. Cloud clinched the sweep.
With the sweep, the Rox have clinched at least a split in the season series with four games left to go between the Bucks and Rox on the 2022 season.
The game also marked the final of an eight-game, seven-day, three-city road trip for the Bucks that saw Waterloo travel to Willmar, Minnesota; Bismarck, North Dakota; and St. Cloud, Minnesota. The Bucks went 3-5 on the road, headlined by a three-game winning streak in Bismarck against the Larks.
The Bucks now return home to Riverfront Stadium for the first time in a week on Saturday to take on the Mankato MoonDogs in front of a sold-out crowd as the Bucks are wearing their specialty pink and black jerseys to raise money for breast cancer research.
The jerseys are available to bid on using the Live Source App. If you can’t make it out to the ballpark, Saturday’s game will be streamed on Watch NWL.
