Pennant race is getting tighter as the Salt Lake Bees lose

Triple-A baseball is supposed to be about player development as much as winning and losing. Toward that end, the Salt Lake Bees are now starting to learn the pressures of being in a pennant race.

Only 16 games remain in the regular season, and the Salt Lake Bees are still in the driver's seat to win their third consecutive division title. Still, the Bees, thanks to a recent slump, have allowed their competition to make things interesting. Salt Lake lost 6-2 to the Colorado Springs Sky Sox on Sunday afternoon at Franklin Covey Field. That means they are just four games ahead of second-place Tacoma in the standings after owning a double-digit lead over the Rainiers for most of the season.

"It's more a race now, and it hasn't been a race all season," said Bees outfielder Terry Evans. "That might be a good thing to kind of challenge us. We got so far ahead so early that we might have coasted through the rest of the season. But now we have to step it up again."

Salt Lake dropped to 73-55 with the loss on Sunday, which was their eighth setback in their past 11 games.

"Now we are in a race, and that isn't such a bad thing," said Bees manager Bobby Mitchell. "It can be a positive thing for our team to see how we react. We really haven't been pushed too much the whole season. We'll see how we do, see if we can hold on."

The Bees ended a four-game losing streak with a home win Saturday night and could have made it two in a row, but they couldn't take advantage of several chances. Salt Lake stranded eight base runners for the game, including runners at second and third with one out in the seventh inning and the bases loaded in the eighth.

Salt Lake pitcher Nick Adenhart took the loss to fall to 7-12 on the season, but he had one of his most efficient starts in weeks. He gave up just three runs through seven innings and pitched into the eighth.

The Bees trailed just 3-2 until the eighth when Colorado Springs first baseman Joe Koshansky ripped a three-run homer off of reliever Darren O'Day.

Even then, the Bees loaded the bases in the bottom half of the eighth to bring the tying run to the plate, but they couldn't get the timely hit they needed for a rally.

Perhaps the best news for the Bees was seeing Evans hit a home run, just his third during his injury-plagued season. Evans, a 2007 triple-A All-Star for the Bees, missed three months with a shoulder injury and just returned to the lineup last week.