Hermosillo delivers walk-off bomb as RailRiders win Severino's rehab start
May 10—MOOSIC — His first contribution to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre offense didn't feel so good. Michael Hermosillo took a sinker off his elbow and needed a minute or two to compose himself when he got to first base.
His last felt much better.
Shortly after Omaha tied the game in the top of the ninth, Hermosillo untied it with a mammoth walk-off home run, then was showered by his teammates with water and Gatorade at home plate as the RailRiders celebrated a 4-3 win in a school-day special Wednesday at PNC Field, capping a morning that began with a rehab start by New York Yankees righty Luis Severino.
"I don't feel my elbow (pain) anymore, that's for sure," joked Hermosillo, who homered for the first time since April 23. "Nice reward for, I feel like, everyone. Just one of those days, 11 a.m. (start), kind of grinding through it, off the night game — so to end it that way was awesome."
Pitching in a competitive situation for the first time since going down with a right lat strain March 27, Severino worked 3 1/3 innings and allowed just two hits: a solo homer by Dairon Blanco off an errant changeup in the third inning, and a broken-bat single by Samad Taylor later in the frame. He fanned three, walked one and ran his fastball up to 98 mph while throwing with the automated balls and strikes system live for the first time.
"Pretty good," Severino said when asked how he felt. "I think all the pitches were working. Fastball command was really good. The (auto) zone was a little tight but, you know, getting used to it."
He came out for the fourth inning to face one final batter and finished with 49 pitches, 29 of which zipped in for strikes. He averaged 95.9 mph on 21 four-seam fastballs — and 95.1 mph on 12 sinkers — of Omaha's 20 swings against him in the game, seven of came up empty.
"Severino had the stuff in his back pocket when he wanted it and when he wanted to go out there and show what he's got," RailRiders manager Shelley Duncan said. "You saw the good fastball, you see the good breaking balls. It was fun to see it. That one home run just looked like something came out there spinning and stayed up in the zone, one of those oops pitches. I don't think that's a reflection of his stuff today. He executed everything that he wanted to on the mound."
Severino's lone mistake gave Omaha a 1-0 lead, and the Storm Chasers added to it when Tyler Gentry worked a bases-loaded walk with two outs in the fifth inning against reliever Barrett Loseke, part of a rally that included three walks and an error.
The RailRiders answered with a similarly styled inning against Omaha starter Mike Mayers, who faced the minimum through three innings and didn't allow a hit until Andrés Chaparro ripped a double down the third-base line with two outs in the fourth.
Jesús Bastidas began the bottom of the fifth with a base hit, then Hermosillo was drilled for a team-leading fifth time. Those two pulled off a double steal and Carlos Narvaez walked to load the bases. Wilmer Difo followed with a hard grounder to the right side that Omaha first baseman Logan Porter snared with a dive, but he couldn't steady himself for a throw to the plate nor beat Difo to the bag and the RailRiders cut it to 2-1.
Estevan Florial chased Mayers with a seven-pitch walk that tied the game, and with one out, reliever Jackson Kowar's full-count fastball to Chaparro missed the outer edge of the auto zone by a sliver, bringing in the go-ahead run.
"I would say the majority of our runs scored this season are a byproduct of home runs," Duncan said. "But when you're able to put together really good at-bats, spit on some tough pitches, draw walks and you run the bases hard all the time, put pressure on defense, you're able to put up runs when you don't have that home run swing going. And this club's learning to do that, and we're going to keep getting better at it."
The RailRiders held off Omaha for a while. In the sixth, Loseke dialed up a strikeout to strand Blanco at third after his two-out triple. He worked around Nick Loftin's two-out double in the seventh, too, then Aaron McGarity breezed through a 1-2-3 eighth on seven pitches, bring the RailRiders three outs from a win.
But Omaha finally got the tying run across in the ninth. McGarity's second pitch of the inning hit Blanco, and he stole second before Clay Dungan walked. With one out, Taylor earned a free pass to load the bases, and Loftin lofted a flyout deep enough to left field to score Blanco.
By the time Duncan could run through the scenarios for who he could pitch in a possible 10th inning, Hermosillo was launching a 2-1, down-in-the-zone, 95-mph heater from Omaha's Dylan Coleman onto the bridge deep beyond the wall in left-center field for the game-winning homer. At 108.4 mph off the bat, flying 432 feet away, it was the kind of blast Hermosillo could admire has he confidently took his first few steps out of the batter's box.
"It's just one of those things where any way you can win a ballgame is super awesome feeling," Hermosillo said.
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