Twenty-Two Was Just Enough: Tower Buzzers Survive Record-Breaking 22-21 Slugfest
ONTARIO, Calif. — What a wild night at ONT Field. The Ontario Tower Buzzers and Inland Empire 66ers turned in a game nobody’s going to forget anytime soon: 43 runs, 33 hits, and a kind of chaos you almost never get in baseball. Ontario survived, just barely, 22-21. You don’t
ONTARIO, Calif. — What a wild night at ONT Field. The Ontario Tower Buzzers and Inland Empire 66ers turned in a game nobody’s going to forget anytime soon: 43 runs, 33 hits, and a kind of chaos you almost never get in baseball. Ontario survived, just barely, 22-21.
You don’t see games like this often. It’s the most runs in any affiliated baseball game since 2021, and the highest total for a full-season Minor League game since 2011. Both teams put up 11 runs in a single inning; that hasn’t happened in the minors since at least 2005. The Tower Buzzers exploded for 11 in the first. Inland Empire fired back with 11 in the seventh.
Ontario (43-40) got out of the gate fast. Seventeen batters came to the plate in the opening inning. They racked up eight hits, took advantage of two errors, and watched a couple wild pitches. Ching-Hsien Ko capped it off with a three-run homer and later, a bases-clearing triple. Just like that, 11-0.
And Ontario wasn’t done. Jaron Elkins doubled in another run in the second, then smashed a two-run homer the next inning, pushing the lead to 16-0.
Even the pitching looked steady early. Jholbran Herder breezed through two scoreless innings, and Javier Bartolozzi followed up with three more, allowing just three unearned runs. At that point, everything was going according to plan.
Then, the game got out of hand. Fast.
Inland Empire trailed 16-3 at the top of the seventh, but they weren’t finished. They stormed back for 11 runs, fueled by five walks, a hit batter, two wild pitches, and a couple of defensive mistakes. Suddenly, it was 16-14, and Ontario’s giant cushion disappeared.
But the Tower Buzzers didn’t break. They came right back in the bottom of the eighth. Mairo Martinus hammered a three-run home run. Later in the inning, Joendry Vargas launched another three-run shot. Six runs, just like that, and the lead stretched back to eight.
Still, the roller coaster wasn’t done. Inland Empire piled on seven more runs in the ninth, bringing the tying run to third. Jecsua Liborius finally slammed the door with out number three, picking up his seventh save.
The numbers jump off the page: 20 hits for Ontario. Ko and Martinus each drove in five, both going 2-for-5. Elkins added a three-hit night, with a double, home run, three RBIs, and three runs. Vargas put together a three-hit game too, Brendan Tunink racked up four hits, and Francisco Espinoza chipped in two more.
Ontario’s pitching was stretched as hard as it has ever been, but didn’t quite break. Four errors meant only 14 of the 21 runs were earned. Bartolozzi got the win out of the bullpen, and Liborius took care of the toughest out of the night.
This slugfest evened the six-game set at one apiece. The Tower Buzzers don’t get many wins like this. After a game like Wednesday’s, they’ll be talking about it for a long time.
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Media Contacts:
Adam Serrano
Regional Marketing Director
Diamond Baseball Holdings
Jeff Woolson
Play-by-Play Broadcaster