Express silence Bee bats

When the Round Rock Express scored a pair of runs in the top of the first inning, it certainly didn't bode well for the Salt Lake Bees on Tuesday night at Franklin Covey Field.

After all, the Express were sending the top pitcher in the Pacific Coast League this season — 6-foot-8 fireballer Jason Hirsh — to the mound. Hirsh entered the game with a league-best 13 wins and a miniscule, by PCL standards, 2.13 ERA. Runs for the Bees figured to be hard to come by.

And Hirsh was, indeed, unhittable. Fortunately for the Bees, he lasted only two innings.

It didn't matter, though. The Express cruised to a 7-2 victory even after their ace was taken out of the game. Salt Lake didn't get a hit until the seventh inning and finished with just three hits all night.

Hirsh took the mound in the third inning but was taken out before he threw a pitch after getting called up to the parent Astros. He is expected to start for Houston on Saturday.

But lefty Mark McLemore came in and shut the Bees hitters down just as Hirsh had before him. Salt Lake didn't have a base runner until the fourth inning when Reggie Willits walked. Willits then got the team's first hit with a two-out single to right in the sixth.

"McLemore came in and shut us down," said Bees manager Brian Harper. "It was just one of those nights. Nothing was falling for us offensively."

The Express, meanwhile, scored seven runs (six earned) off Bees starter Dustin Moseley in the first six innings. Salt Lake finally broke up the shutout with a pair of runs in the eighth inning on run-scoring singles by Darren Blakely and Casey Smith.

The Bees fell to 67-49 with the loss. Combined with Tacoma's win over Omaha on Tuesday night, Salt Lake's lead in the PCL's Pacific Northern Division is now down to four games with 28 games remaining in the regular season.

Round Rock, meanwhile, improved to 69-48 and is currently running away with the PCL's American Southern Division, 9 1/2 games ahead of New Orleans.

The two division leaders, who have split the first two games of the series, will play again tonight and Thursday before the Bees head out on the road for a four-game trip to Colorado Springs.