Peoria Rally Comes up Short Friday in Davenport

DAVENPORT, IA– The Chiefs made things interesting late on Friday but the Quad Cities River Bandits held off a Peoria push to hang on to a 4-3 win.

The Bandits jumped out to an early lead thanks in large part to Mother Nature. After a walk to Trevor Werner, Brett Squires connected on a wind-aided home run to left field to give Quad Cities a 2-0 cushion.

Quad Cities entered play Friday with the lowest ERA in the Midwest League. Starter Steven Zobac continued the trend. The right-hander took a perfect game into the sixth inning before a two-out single by Joshua Baez gave the Chiefs their first base runner. It was Zobac’s only blemish on his way to his first win of the season.

Peoria starter Hancel Rincon settled in after the first inning homer. Rincon worked around minimal traffic and fired all three pitches for strikes. In the fifth, an RBI groundout made it 3-0. Then, in the sixth, Rincon was lifted for Roy Garcia. A wild pitch, charged to Garcia, allowed a run in to make it 4-0. Rincon was tagged with four runs Friday over 5 ⅓ innings. He took the loss.

The Chiefs took a bite out of the Quad Cities bullpen in the top of the seventh. After back-to-back reaches by Leonardo Bernal and Zach Levenson, Osvaldo Tovalin launched a three-run homer over the right field fence to cut the deficit to 4-3. For Tovalin, it was his first blast since July of 2023.

Left-hander Ryan Ramsey, who surrendered the homer, settled down to close out the ballgame. He worked a 1-2-3 eighth and ultimately punched out Tovalin to later end the tilt.

Peoria outfielder Zach Levenson, who entered the game with the longest hit streak in the Midwest League, has his streak snapped at 10. His pair of walks in Friday’s game pushed his on-base streak to 11 games.

With the loss, the Chiefs dropped their fifth consecutive contest. Quad Cities won their eighth in a row to jump to 10-3. Game five of the series is Saturday at 6:00 p.m.