Salt Lake Bees: Rainiers deal out another loss

SALT LAKE CITY — There are only two more games this season pitting the Salt Lake Bees and the Tacoma Rainiers.

That's a good thing for the Bees considering recent outcomes.

The Bees have been the most consistent, best team in the PCL's Pacific North Division the past few seasons. In fact, no divisional foe has beaten Salt Lake in a season series in five years.

Until now.

Monday night the Rainiers continued their seasonlong dominance over the Bees, winning 8-7 at Spring Mobile Ballpark. That gives Tacoma a 10-4 advantage in the season series.

Amazingly, the last time the Bees lost a season series against a division rival was against Tacoma in 2005.

"(The Rainiers) have a lot of veteran players all over the field," said Bees manager Bobby Mitchell. "That's a big difference. With our call-ups and injuries, they are catching us at a good time for them."

Thanks to their command in the head-to-head games the Rainiers, at 46-38, now lead the division by four games over the second-place Bees, which fell to 42-42.

Monday continued Salt Lake's power outage at home. The Bees failed to hit a home run at Spring Mobile, which is generally considered a hitter-friendly park. In fact, the Bees have just two home runs in their last eight home games and just 28 of their 67 homers have been in Salt Lake.

Tacoma, meanwhile, had no problem hitting the ball out of the ballpark on Monday. The Rainiers ripped four round-trippers on Monday night, with Jack Hannahan's three-run shot in the second inning being the biggest blow. Brad Nelson's two-run homer in the fifth, meanwhile, broke a 4-4 tie, giving Tacoma a lead it would never relinquish.

Salt Lake actually out-hit Tacoma 13-8 on Monday night, but the Rainiers earned the win by getting more long balls.

"We're giving up way too many home runs," said Mitchell. "We don't have a lot of power in our lineup right now, so we have to string some hits together to score. We out-hit them and scored seven runs, but we couldn't string as many hit together that we needed to win."

Trevor Bell, who has spent most of the season coming out of the bullpen for the parent Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, got the start for the Bees. He went three innings giving up four runs, three of them earned. Tommy Mendoza pitched the middle four innings for the Bees and suffered the loss.