Three Homers Power Bulls By Bats, 5-2
Louisville, KY --- Vince Belnome, Leslie Anderson and Jesus Flores each homered to power the Durham Bulls past the Louisville Bats 5-2 on Monday night.
JD Martin (W, 8-3) was the beneficiary of the three longballs for the Bulls (41-24), working 6 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball. Over Martin's last 20 1/3 innings, he has permitted just two earned runs. Martin stranded six baserunners over his six innings, including Cincinnati's top prospect Billy Hamilton three times in scoring position. The Bats (30-35) were just 1-14 hitting with runners in scoring position.
The Bulls assumed a 2-0 lead in the third when Vince Belnome hit his first homer since April 28th, driving a 2-0 pitch from the recently-optioned Pedro Villarreal over the left-centerfield wall.
In the sixth, Leslie Anderson jerked a two-run blast to right against Villarreal to put the Bulls up 4-0. Jesus Flores connected in the seventh against reliever Nick Christiani to move the lead to 5-0.
Louisville put a mild scare into the Bulls in the ninth, pushing across a couple of runs against Juan Sandoval. Kirby Yates (S, 3) entered to record the final two outs of the game, including a diving stab of a grounder by third baseman Cole Figueroa, robbing Neftali Soto of a RBI-hit that would have brought the tying run to the plate.
The Bulls, now 4-3 on their 8-game road trip, kept their three game lead in the South as Norfolk won at Indianapolis 2-1.
Jake Odorizzi (5-1, 3.90) starts against Chad Reineke (4-3, 3.51) in the series and road trip finale on Tuesday night at 7:05 PM ET.