Salt Lake Bees: Team falls behind early in blowout loss

One bad inning spoiled the whole darn bunch for the Salt Lake Bees Saturday afternoon at Spring Mobile Ballpark.

A five-run second lifted the Reno Aces to a 7-2 victory over the Bees to even the season-opening series at one game apiece.

"Just the one inning really hurt us," said Salt Lake manager Bobby Mitchell. "Then there wasn't much action offensively for us."

The Bees managed just four hits. Their only runs came on a solo homer by Brandon Wood and a throwing error by Reno.

The scores came in the bottom of the decisive inning after the Aces seized control of the game by sending 10 batters to the plate and putting five runs on the board. The outburst chased Bees starter Matt Palmer from the game.

"They just kind of out-hit us and out-pitched us at the beginning," said Mitchell, who acknowledged there was a silver lining to be found.

The situation allowed four Salt Lake relievers to get at least one inning of work.

Fernando Rodriguez got things started by getting the final out in the second. The righthander went on to throw the next three innings, allowing just one earned run. Rich Thompson followed with two shutout frames before Matt Wilhite and Rafael Rodgriuez capped things off. Each tossed a scoreless inning.

"It was encouraging to see our bullpen do as well as they did because we had no idea how they would react," said Mitchell, who noted the youth of many of the relievers. "All of them really did a good job."

They came in and shut the door, he added, while pointing out that a few more hits and a rally would have made things more interesting.

"It looked like the bullpen was good," said Thompson. "And that's a good sign for the rest of the year."

A day after emotional pregame ceremonies honoring former teammate Nick Adenhart, who died Thursday morning from injuries sustained in an automobile collision hours after pitching six shutout innings for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Bees are trying to move forward.

"It's hard to say if today was easier than yesterday. It's almost kind of a let-down kind of thing, you know, the day after," said Mitchell. "I think they were more relaxed going out to play, but maybe a little more exhausted just from all the stress that we were going through for a while.

"I think that might be," he continued. "But we don't have any excused why we lost. But I think, obviously, game in and game out it's going to get easier."

The series concludes today at 2:05 p.m. Reno lefty Travis Blackley and Salt Lake's Mike MacDonald are the scheduled starters.

E-mail: dirk@desnews.com