WooSox Close Inaugural Season With Series Sweep

ALLENTOWN, P.A. — The Worcester Red Sox (74-54) closed their inaugural season with a victory, capping off a five-game sweep thanks to a 10-1 win over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (53-74) at Coca-Cola Park on Sunday afternoon.

With the victory, the WooSox close their season at 74-54 with a 39-25 record away from Polar Park. Sunday also marked the final game of the Triple-A Final Stretch, in which Worcester finished with an 8-2 record. Since August 22, the team posted a record 25-8, a top five mark in the league.

Worcester also went 55-12 when scoring the first run of the game, and the 55th of which came on a two run bottom of the first inning. Jarren Duran led off with a single, and after an out and a Triston Casas single, Franchy Cordero delivered an RBI knock to right, scoring Duran. The swing pushed Casas to third, and he came home moments later on a Jonathan Araúz sac-fly to put Worcester up 2-0.

Lehigh Valley got one back in the second on an RBI single from Darick Hall, the only run allowed by WooSox starter Connor Seabold. The right-hander ultimately went 5.0 innings, giving up four hits in his final outing of the season.

Seabold concludes his year—one shortened by an elbow injury—with a 3.50 ERA and 64 strikeouts in 59.2 innings. The 25-year-old also reached the Major Leagues with Boston in September.

After Seabold exited, Worcester's offense tacked on an insurance run in the top of the sixth inning. After singles from Johan Mieses and Jack Lopez, a double play put Mieses on third. Two batters later, Duran came through with an RBI single to right to make it 3-1 in favor of the road team.

Worcester's bullpen entered the day with a 3.43 ERA over the last month, the fourth-best mark in the league. On Sunday, it closed with a bang, holding the IronPigs without a run over the final four innings—Kyle Hart started that stretch with a scoreless sixth, and Zack Kelly did the same in the seventh.

A pair of former PawSox put the finishing touches on the victory: Chad De La Guerra ripped an RBI double in the eighth along with a two-run single in the ninth, while Josh Ockimey added an eighth-inning sac-fly. Taylor Motter put the WooSox up 10-1 with a bases-clearing, three-run double in the ninth, the final runs of a five-run ninth inning that sealed the win.

Yairo Muñoz concludes the season as the team's batting average (.308) and OPS leader (.785), highlighted by his franchise-record 35-game hit streak that spanned from the start of July in to August. Despite only playing 60 games in Triple-A, Duran finishes the season as the team's home run leader with 16, while Cordero's 56 RBIs paced the WooSox over 78 games.

The WooSox return to action 184 days from today, opening the season on April 5, 2022 on the road against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.