Bees' rally not enough

In the middle of the second inning Saturday night at Franklin Covey Field, the Salt Lake Bees already had spotted the Tucson Sidewinders a 10-run lead.

"There are 210 days until the Bees' next game," said a Bees employee to the assembled media in the press room.

The prediction ended up being right, but it was ever so close to being off the mark.

The Bees battled and battled but came up just short of a remarkable rally, losing 10-8 to the Sidewinders in the fourth game of their best-of-five Pacific Coast League playoff series. With the victory, Tucson advances to the PCL championship series with a 3-1 series win.

"It was not exactly how you want to end the season," Bees manager Brian Harper said. "But it also was another statement about the character of this team and of how hard they play to come back and make that a game."

Tucson scored three runs in the first off of Bees starter Daniel Davidson and added seven more off Davidson and reliever Richard Thompson in the second. It appeared a rout was on.

Bees reliever Matt Hensley came into the game in the third inning and pitched five shutout innings.

"That was huge. I was expecting Matt to go two innings, but he was throwing so good that we kept running him out there," said Harper. "He has all winter to rest."

Marcus Gwyn then finished up with two scoreless innings of relief. In all, the two Bees pitchers combined to retire the final 17 straight Sidewinders batters.

Meanwhile, the Salt Lake offense chipped away at the lead. Dallas McPherson got things started with a solo homer in the bottom of the second. The Bees added a run in the third to cut the gap to 10-2.

The fourth inning had the potential of being big for the Bees, but it didn't turn out that way. Salt Lake loaded the bases with no outs — but didn't score. Ryan Budde popped out and Adam Pavkovich and Nathan Haynes both struck out on questionable called strikes — much to the dismay of the Bees and the partisan fans.

In fact, Bees designated hitter Mike Eylward protested the calls against his teammates so hard that he was thrown out of the game by home plate umpire Scott Chamberlain. That caused Bees manager Brian Harper to get after Chamberlain — and he was thrown out, too.

"Umpires are human — just like coaches — and we all make mistakes," said Harper of the strikes called in the fourth inning. "I'm sure he wasn't trying to make mistakes, but it was an unfortunate time for us because we were trying to claw back into the game."