DAVENPORT, IOWA (September 20, 2021) — In their final night game of the regular season, the Quad Cities River Bandits secured their thirteenth series win on Saturday as Parker Bates’s first career walk-off single scored the game-ending run in their 4-3 victory over the South Bend Cubs at Modern Woodmen Park.
Quad Cities scratched across the game’s opening-run in the bottom of the first against Bailey Horn when John Rave came to the plate and was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. However, Horn limited the damage and struck out Eaton to keep it a 1-0 game.
The lone run was enough for Bandits’ starter Mitch Ellis, who in his first career-start, struck out four in four scoreless innings and faced the minimum until Yonathan Perlaza pushed a broken-bat single up the middle with two outs in the top of the fourth.
Horn settled down after the first inning and matched Ellis zero-for-zero for the remainder of his four-inning start before handing the ball off to Zach Leigh.
After Zach Phillips used an inning-ending double-play to post a zero in the fifth, South Bend got its first runs on Perlaza’s second hit of the game, a two-run shot for his second homer of the series and a 2-1 Cubs’ lead.
In the bottom of the seventh, the Bandits’ offense came back to life and backed up Phillips’ latest one-two-three frame with a two-run blast of their own from Logan Porter, who plated Nathan Eaton to put Quad Cities back in front, 3-2.
Phillips and Hunter Bigge concluded their nights with a perfect eighth, including Bigge striking out the side, before Will Klein took the hill to close it out in the top of the ninth. After Perlaza led off the inning with a walk, the righty struck out Bryce Ball, but then allowed a 10-pitch single to Tyler Durna, which moved pinch-runner Edmond Americaan to third as the tying run. Klein then struck out Jake Slaughter and got Bryce Windham to pop up, but Jake Means dropped the ball and allowed the tying run to score. Klein punched out Pablo Aliendo to strand the go-ahead run on third.
In the bottom of the ninth, newly-entered Eduarneil Nunez got Means to ground out, but Tyler Tolbert drew a seven-pitch walk to extend the game and put the tying-run on. In the midst of Parker Bates’s plate appearance, Tolbert stole second and then came around to score the winning run when Bates took a two-strike pitch into center-field for the game-winning knock.
Despite blowing the save by giving up an unearned run, Klein (7-1) got the win for Quad Cities, while Nunez (1-3) got the loss allowing a walk-off hit for the second time in the series.
ABOUT THE BANDITS: The 2021 season marks the River Bandits’ first year as a new Advanced-A Major League affiliate. As such, the team will be offering higher-quality baseball than has ever before been played in the Quad Cities. Additionally, the Bandits will welcome a new MLB affiliate to the Quad Cities, the Kansas City Royals. The River Bandits anchor the Quad Cities’ sports-market, which The Sports Business Journal named the top minor-league sports-market in the country in 2015 and second-best minor-league market in its 2017 follow-up ranking. In 2015, 2017, and again in 2019, the River Bandits earned Ballpark Digest’s award for “Best Charitable Works” in Minor League Baseball, the only club to win that coveted award three times. For more information, visit www.riverbandits.com or contact General Manager Joe Kubly at (563) 333-2768.
