Ruff Night for the Hops as Veen Homers Twice

BOX SCORE

SPOKANE, WASH. --- Spokane Indians starting pitcher Mike Ruff tossed six strong innings, and Colorado Rockies’ prized prospect Zac Veen homered twice to lead Spokane to a 9-2 win in the opener of a six-game series on Tuesday night at Avista Stadium. Hillsboro (26-30) set a franchise record by losing their ninth consecutive game.

The Indians scored an unearned run in the first, and had tacked on another in the second when 20-year-old Veen stepped up with two on and two out against Hops starter Luke Albright. Veen belted one way out to right field, his sixth home run of the season.

A sacrifice fly by Julio Carreras in the third made it 6-0 Spokane, and that was the score when Veen came up again in the fifth. This time he took Albright deep to the opposite field in left, marking his second career multi-home run game.

Ruff mixed his pitches well and held the Hops scoreless through five innings, allowing just one runner into scoring position. Hillsboro finally got on the board in the sixth inning against Ruff on a homer to left-center by Tim Tawa, his team-leading seventh of the season. Two outs later, Adrian Del Castillo drew his second walk of the game. That set the table for Hops shortstop Ryan Bliss, who stroked a double to right-center field to score Del Castillo and cut the deficit to 7-2.

That was as close as the Hops would get. Spokane tacked on two runs in the eighth against reliever Jose Santamaria on a single, a walk, an error and a balk, to make it 9-2.

Tanner Propst tossed two scoreless innings for Spokane, and Adam McKillican worked a 1-2-3 ninth to close out the game.

Second-place Spokane (29-27) remains four and a half games behind first-place Eugene, with eight games remaining in the first-half pennant race.

Game two of the series is at 6:35PM on Wednesday, with airtime at 6:20PM on Rip City Radio 620AM and online at www.RipCityRadio.com.