Vasquez RBI Double Flips the Game as Tourists Rally Past Cyclones 7-6

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Yosweld Vasquez has played three games for the Asheville Tourists. He has a hit in all three of them. Wednesday night's was his biggest by a mile.

With two runners on and Asheville trailing 6-5 in the seventh, Vasquez drilled a ball toward right-center field. Trey Snyder leapt at the wall and watched it bounce over his head. Two runs scored. Vasquez slid into second, ripped off his helmet, and let the emotion pour out. The Tourists led 7-6 and Francisco Frias did the rest, striking out three while recording the final five outs to earn his fourth win of the season.

It was an exciting back and forth game from the first pitch, and Javier Perez was at the center of it early. The right-hander struck out the side in the first inning and finished with four innings, two runs, and eight strikeouts. He now has 18 strikeouts in 9.2 innings for Asheville, a jaw-dropping rate for a pitcher who has looked better with every outing.

Asheville struck first in the first on a rundown play. Caden Powell got caught between first and second, and while Brooklyn was focused on tagging him out, Xavier Neyens took off from second and raced home to score. 1-0.

Brooklyn tied it in the third when Elian Peña laced a base hit to right for his first High-A hit, his 100th on the season at just 18 years old, an RBI single that evened things up. Then came a pair of unusual plays. With a runner on third, Perez disengaged from the mound three times, an automatic balk, and Brooklyn took the lead. Then a Yonathan Henriquez wall-scraper home run to right in the fifth made it 4-1.

Powell answered with a solo blast to left to cut it to 4-2. With Justin Thomas Jr. promoted to Double-A Corpus Christi on Monday, Powell now leads the active Tourists roster with 14 home runs. Then Kenni Gomez stepped in. The veteran Tourist, who spent 109 games in Asheville across 2024 and 2025 before being brought back from Corpus Christi on Monday, took a hanging breaking ball inside and drilled it over the right field wall to tie the game at four. His first home run in Asheville since June 28th, 2025.

Brooklyn surged back in front on another balk with a runner on third, this time from Joan Ogando in the sixth to make it 5-4. Then a Neyens throwing error in the seventh allowed another run to score. 6-4. But the Tourists answered in the same inning. A Yonathan Henriquez error on a routine throw to first allowed Neyens to score from third. 6-5. Then Vasquez stepped in and delivered.

DJ Newman went 2-for-4 to extend his hit streak to fifteen games, taking sole possession of the longest active hitting streak in all of baseball. Daudet went 2-for-3 with a walk. Vasquez and Gomez each drove in two runs.

The Tourists and Cyclones meet again Thursday night at HomeTrust Park. Adam Shoemaker takes the ball for Asheville against Brooklyn's Joel Diaz. First pitch is set for 6:35 p.m.