12 plays of 2018: Records fall in Duke City sweep

Before the calendar flips to 2019, we celebrate the holidays by looking back at 12 moments from the New Orleans Baby Cakes' 2018 season.

August 7

The Baby Cakes racked up 21 hits, including two triples from Rafael Ortega to set a new single-season club record, and polished off a four-game sweep in Albuquerque with a 15-6 rout.
All 21 hits came in the first seven innings, putting within reach the franchise record of 25 hits in a game, established at Iowa in 2007. But the Baby Cakes were retired in order in each of their final two trips to the plate, settling instead for their largest output since May 6, 2013, also at Isotopes Park. Each member of the starting lineup, including pitcher Dillon Peters, tallied at least one hit.
New Orleans completed its second straight sweep in the Duke City, where the club had lost 35 of 46 meetings from 2008-13 before the Isotopes were shifted to the PCL's Pacific Conference. The eight straight wins are tied for the second-longest streak in an opposing venue in team history, trailing only nine consecutive wins in Oklahoma City in 1993.

Ortega and Tomas Telis led the Baby Cakes' charge with four hits apiece. Each of the game's first four batters singled, including an run-scoring knock from Oretega, and Telis capped the four-run frame with a two-run single.
Leading off for the second inning in a row, Austin Dean ripped a home run to left to put the 'Cakes ahead 5-0, only for Albuquerque to respond with a run on the bottom of the second and four more in the third to knot the score.
But New Orleans came back with two in the fourth to regain a lead it would not relinquish, and salted the game away with a five-run seventh which was highlighted by Ortega's second triple of the afternoon and 10th of the season to set a new single-season club mark. Ortega joined Isan Diaz in posting a two-triple game in the series, after New Orleans had gone more than eight years since a player had two triples in a game: Vinny Rottino in April 2010, coincidentally also coming at Isotopes Park.
Peter O'Brien slugged the first home run of what would become a 10-homer binge in August, a pinch hit three-run blast during the seventh-inning rally.