Spiezio, Rainiers stop Stingers

Scott Spiezio is a 32-year-old former World Series hero with more than 3,000 major-league at-bats on his record.

So what was he doing tearing up the Salt Lake Stingers on Sunday?

The veteran is in the midst of a rehab assignment from Seattle, and in that capacity helped the Tacoma Rainiers to a 6-4 victory over the Stingers at Franklin Covey Field.

Spiezio went 4-for-5 with a homer and two RBIs as the Stingers' 11-game win streak at home came to an inevitable end.

"He swung the bat for them today," Stingers manager Dino Ebel said of Spiezio. "He got some pitches to hit and didn't miss them."

The Rainiers lead the PCL in fielding percentage, and their prowess was evident on several sparkling defensive plays that kept the Stingers at bay.

"We were a couple hits away from some big innings, but they didn't fall," Ebel said.

Tacoma took the initial lead in the second when Justin Leone doubled, then scored when Stingers leftfielder Nick Gorneault bobbled a shallow single by Miguel Olivo.

Gorneault made up for that play in the bottom of the inning by pounding his 13th homer of the season to tie it at 1-1.

Salt Lake took the lead briefly in the fourth on a deep homer by Brian Gordon — his 12th — to center.

Tacoma moved out in front 3-2 in the fifth on a single by Ramon Santiago and home run by Yuniesky Betancourt. An inning later, Spiezio made it 4-2 with another Tacoma homer. The Rainiers added two more in the seventh to pull in front 6-2.

But the Stingers didn't put together that 11-game streak without making some comebacks, and they tried to put together another. They scratched to get a couple baserunners in the seventh, bringing up Casey Kotchman. He lashed an opposite-field single to left, which the leftfielder charged, thinking to make a throw at the plate on Zach Sorensen. But the ball took a nasty sideways hop and rolled far past him, allowing both baserunners to score.

That was it for the Stingers, though, as they went down relatively quietly in the final two frames. Clayton Andrews (5-2) took the loss for Salt Lake; the victory went to Tacoma's Chris Buglovsky (3-2).

The series continues tonight (7 p.m.) with Chris Bootcheck (3-1, 4.72 ERA) on the mound for Salt Lake and Cha-Seung Baek (6-2, 4.02) starting for Tacoma.

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E-mail: rich@desnews.com