Nashville, TN – The Nashville Sounds turned in an 8-4 win over the visiting Gwinnett Stripers Tuesday night at First Horizon Park. With the win, Nashville took the lead in the season-long series over the Atlanta Braves Triple-A farm club. Seven different players chipped in with a hit for Nashville while Jimmy Herron leading the charge with a three-RBI game.
Brandon Woodruff had an abrupt exit to his sixth rehab start with the Sounds after taking a comebacker off his pitching arm with two outs in the top of the second inning. It forced Josh Maciejewski to take over on the mound with a runner in scoring position that eventually came around to score the game’s first run.
Gwinnett made it 2-0 in the third and the only run charged to Maciejewski over his three-plus innings. The left-hander struck out the side in order in the fourth before facing the minimum in the fifth after picking off Matthew Batten who reached to leadoff the inning on a Nashville error.
Herron and Raynel Delgado brought the game back to even with a couple of sac flies in the bottom of the third and fourth innings. Anthony Seigler started a Sounds’ two-out rally with walk in the fifth. Jeferson Quero collected his first career Triple-A hit to put runners on the corners before Bobby Dalbec drove in the go-ahead run with a RBI single.
Sam McWilliams pitched two scoreless innings while working around a pair of hits and a walk to keep the lead for Nashville before turning it over to Jesus Liranzo who tossed a scoreless eighth with a pair of strikeouts to strand two Stripers after allowing a couple two-out singles.
Freddy Zamora drew a RBI walk in the bottom of the eighth to help keep the bases loaded. Herron tacked on additional insurance runs with a two-RBI single. Zamora and Herron then executed a double steal that saw Zamora swipe home to cap a five-run inning and gave Nashville a 8-2 lead.
The insurance runs paid dividends with the Stripers able to score two runs in the top of the ninth off Liranzo in his second inning of work. The right-hander battled back to leave a runner stranded in scoring position and keep the damage to just two runs and preserve the 8-4 win with his fourth save of the year.
The Sounds will turn to LHP Bruce Zimmermann (3-2, 5.40 ERA) with their sights set on a 2-0 series lead on Wednesday night. First pitch for game two of the series from First Horizon Park is scheduled for 6:35pm.
