Want to know how closely Tulsa and Arkansas have played one another this season?
Consider this: Tulsa's 6-3 victory Friday night was a relative blowout.
The Drillers jumped on Travelers reliever Geoff Broussard for two doubles and a single that led to five runs in the eighth inning to break a tie game, and the Travs couldn't get any closer after Brian Hernandez' two-run home run in the ninth as the teams split a four-game series at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.
Arkansas finished the season series with a decisive 21-10 advantage, but 16 of those games were decided by one run and six more were decided by two runs.
"I think history would tell you that it's going to be a dog fight," Arkansas Manager Bill Richardson said. "It was no different tonight."
Raywilly Gomez hit his first home run of the season in the fourth inning to give the Travs a 1-0 lead. Then Erisbel Arruebarrena, who went 4 for 4, singled and scored in the fifth off starter Albert Suarez to tie the game at 1-1.
That's where it stayed until the eighth, when reliever Chris O'Grady gave up a double, a bunt single and walked a batter to load the bases with no outs. Richardson called on Broussard, who struck out 72 batters in 44 2/3 innings and had 16 saves at Class A Inland Empire.
Broussard's Class AA debut didn't go as smoothly. He allowed one run to score on a wild pitch, gave up a two-run double to Kyle Farmer, got two batters to fly out, then Arruebarrena hit an RBI double and Daniel Mayora drove in another run with a single to make it 6-1.
"That's how much confidence I had in him," Richardson said of putting Broussard in with the bases loaded. "He let one get up on him, but that's part of it.
"Now he's officially a Trav."
Tulsa Manager Razor Shines said his hitters went to the plate against Broussard without a plan, considering they didn't know much about him.
"Maybe we benefited from that," Shines said. "We didn't know anything about him. I guess we just said, 'Hey, fellas, get up there and get after it.' "
Now Tulsa has pulled itself back into the playoff race. The Travs hold a four-game lead over Springfield and Tulsa, which begin a three-game series today, in the North Division standings with 10 games remaining in the second half of the season. One of those three teams will begin the first round of the playoffs Sept. 9 at Northwest Arkansas, which won the first-half title.
"I want to just play clean tomorrow night," Richardson said. "We've got our hands full with the team in front of us, and that's the way we're going to look at it."
Sports on 08/29/2015