Vancouver Gets Past Tri-City in Series Finale

A big late game hit and strong pitching throughout enabled the Vancouver Canadians (19-17) to leave town with a 3-1 win over the Tri-City Dust Devils (20-19) on a breezy and smoky Sunday afternoon at Gesa Stadium.

Both starting pitchers pitched well for their teams, with Dust Devils right-hander Bryce Osmond (1-5) going into the 7^th inning for the first time as a professional and Canadians righty Devereaux Harrison facing the minimum 15 batters in five sterling innings for his side.

Vancouver first got on the scoreboard in the 4^th inning via a two-out rally. 3B Cade Doughty singled on the infield to get on, and SS Josh Kasevich followed with a double finding open space between RF Joe Stewart, playing shallow, and CF D’Shawn Knowles. Doughty sprinted all the way around, scoring for a 1-0 Canadians lead.

Tri-City made a bid to answer in the bottom of the 4^th, but the southwesterly breeze had other ideas. Stewart legged out an infield single, the only hit given up by Harrison, to get aboard with one out and bring up 2B Adrian Placencia. The switch hitter crushed a fly ball to right field from his left-hand side, looking off the bat like a two-run homer that would have given the Dust Devils the lead.

Vancouver RF Gabby Martinez went back, ready to either watch the ball go over the wall or play it off the bounce. Instead, the wind pushed the ball back, dropping it straight down on the warning track. Martinez reached back over his head toward home plate and made a difficult catch, turning and firing a throw to first base. Stewart, past second base when Martinez made the out, retagged and raced back to first but 1B Rainer Nuñez fielded it just before Stewart slid back in. The 9-3 double play short-circuited the threat and preserved the Canadians lead.

The home nine would deny Harrison the win in the 6^th inning and tie the ballgame. LF Gustavo Campero led off the inning with a walk, moving station to station on a successful sacrifice bunt by 3B Casey Dana and a groundout by C Myles Emmerson. Stewart came back up and hit a hard grounder at the feet of Vancouver reliever Justin Kelly (2-0), glancing off him toward second. 2B Michael Turconi grabbed it and threw to first, but umpires ruled his effort pulled Nuñez off the bag. Campero scored on the play, ruled an error, to even the game at 1-1 through six innings.

The big hit for the Canadians came in the top of the 7^th, a one-out single to right by LF Alan Roden off Tri-City reliever Roman Phansalkar that scored both Turconi and CF Dasan Brown for the final 3-1 margin. Both runs were charged to Osmond, who finished six-plus innings giving up three runs on five hits with three strikeouts and making his second quality start of the year.

Except for DH Arol Vera’s one-out double in the bottom of the 7^th, the Dust Devils were held off the bases the rest of the way. T.J. Brock pitched the 9^th for his second save.

Despite the loss the Dust Devils had both a successful series and homestand. Tri-City won five of the seven games in their series with Vancouver and finished their 13-game stay at Gesa Stadium with a record of 8-5.

The Dust Devils head back on the road this week, beginning their last six-game visit to the Hillsboro Hops in 2023 at 6:35 p.m. Tuesday night at Ron Tonkin Field. Broadcast coverage of the game begins with the pregame show at 6:15 p.m. both here and at the MiLB First Pitch app.

Tri-City and Hillsboro will play 6:35 p.m. games Wednesday through Friday as well. Saturday’s game is scheduled for a 4:05 p.m. start, and a 1:05 p.m. Sunday matinee closes the series out before the Dust Devils return home for a six-game series with the Spokane Indians from May 30-June 4.

Tickets for the Spokane series, including the June 2-4 return of the Columbia River Rooster Tails, are on sale now. Also, special ticket rates are available for groups of 20 or more. For more information on Dust Devils single game, season, mini-plan (11, 22, 33) and group tickets, visit dustdevilsbaseball.com, call the team office at (509) 544-8789, or visit the team office (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on game nights, or Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. otherwise).