Nashville Sounds late rally falls short against Norfolk Tides, 6-5

Nashville, TN – Rylan Bannon hit a grand slam off Ethan Small in the first inning and the Norfolk Tides never looked back in a 6-5 win over the Nashville Sounds on Friday night at First Horizon Park.

Bannon’s grand slam came just moments after Small issued a two-out walk to Jacob Nottingham to extend the inning. Small, who entered tonight’s game with just two earned runs allowed all season, was tagged with his first loss.

The Sounds battled back multiple times but fell just short in the ninth. In the bottom of the fourth, Brian Navarreto had a run-scoring single and Andruw Monasterio trimmed the deficit to 4-2 with an RBI double.

Small settled in after the first-inning grand slam and didn’t allow any more runs the rest of his outing. He struck out six batters in four innings.
 
Nashville cut the deficit to a pair of runs again in the bottom of the seventh when Brice Turang sliced an opposite-field RBI single down the left field line to score Jonathan Davis.
 
The Sounds trailed 6-3 in the bottom of the ninth when Davis came to the plate with runners at first and second and one out. Davis hit a groundball to first that went between the legs of Adley Rutschman and into the right field corner. A bad throw by right fielder Kyle Stowers followed and both runners scored on the pair of errors. Davis advanced all the way to third and stood 90 feet away with Nashville trailing 6-5.
 
However, it wasn’t meant to be as Turang bounced out to first and Tyler White grounded out to second to end the game.
 
Game five of the series is scheduled for Saturday night at First Horizon Park. Right-hander Dylan File (2-0, 4.84) starts for Nashville against right-hander Grayson Rodriguez (2-1, 4.15) for Norfolk. The first pitch is scheduled for 6:35pm.

Post-Game Notes

• Andruw Monasterio (2-for-4, 2B, RBI) had his first multi-hit game of the season.
• Reliever Peter Strzelecki struck out all four batters he faced tonight and has 16 in 11 1/3 innings in 2022.
• The four earned runs allowed by Ethan Small matched a career-high (also 5/7/21 w/ Double-A Biloxi at Birmingham)…the grand slam he allowed in the first inning was the first against him in his career.

The Nashville Sounds are the Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers and play at First Horizon Park. Single-game tickets are on sale now for all home games in 2022. For more information call 615.690.4487 or e-mail tickets@nashvillesounds.com.