Nashville, TN – The Nashville Sounds extended their season-long winning streak to five games after beating the Worcester Red Sox 2-1 Saturday night at First Horizon Park. Easton McGee began Nashville’s bullpen game with three strong innings in his first start since last August. Jett Williams provided an early jolt of offense and ended with two of the five hits in the Sounds win.
After McGee got an inning-ending double play to help negate a pair of WooSox hits in the top of the first, Williams instantly put Nashville on the board in the home half. The Brewers no. 3-rated prospect launched a leadoff home run for his first of the season and extended his on-base streak to 13 straight games to tie the team lead. Worcester answered back with a run on two more hits off McGee in the top of the second, including the RBI fly ball single that dropped into right field with Jacob Hurtubise losing it in the sky.
Kaleb Bowman helped to keep it a 1-1 tie after he entered in the top of the fourth. Despite a pair of walks, the right-hander matched it with two strikeouts in his only inning of work. The Sounds were held in check with a three-up, three-down bottom half including a three-strikeout inning for Worcester’s Noah Song.
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Reiss Knehr worked himself out of a bases loaded jam in the top of the fifth after issuing three walks to put all runners aboard. A hard liner right at Freddy Zamora turned into an easy double play to get Knehr through a scoreless inning in his Nashville Sounds debut. Williams added a single to his line for his second multi-hit game of the series in the bottom of the fifth but was left stranded as he did so with two outs.
Eddys Leonard followed a Brock Wilken walk in the bottom of the sixth inning with his team-leading sixth double of the season to put a pair in scoring position with no outs. Ethan Murray hit an opposite field warning track sacrifice fly to give Nashville their 2-1 advantage, but a strikeout and lineout left Leonard stranded at third and Nashville unable to add additional insurance.
Right-hander Blake Holub capped two scoreless innings with a 1-2-3 top of the seventh. A leadoff walk and two-out Worcester error kept Nashville at the plate in the seventh but once again unable to add to the lead with another runner left in scoring position as the Sounds continued to cling to a 2-1 lead.
Will Childers took over on the bump to start the eighth inning and struck out two WooSox batters to extend his current streak without an earned run allowed to eight innings on the year – and the team lead. Leonard made it a multi-hit game of his own with a single in to lead off the bottom of the eighth, but Kyle Keller retired each of the next three Sounds batters in order to send Childers back to the mound protecting the one-run advantage.
He did just that with a three-up, three-down inning to earn his fourth save of the season and help keep the WooSox to just four hits over the final seven innings of the ballgame and make it nine straight innings without an earned run allowed for Childers.
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The Nashville Sounds and WooSox wrap up their first ever meeting with Sunday’s series finale. First pitch is slated for 1:05pm Left-hander Shane Drohan (1-0, 3.12 ERA) is scheduled to make his second start of the series after earning the win on Tuesday.
