Indians win thriller

It was a tale of two pitchers at Avista Stadium Tuesday night in the Spokane Indians’ narrow 9-8 win over the Tri-City Dust Devils.

With Boise and Tri-City tied for second place in the Northwest League East Division and breathing down the Indians’ necks, the win ensured that Spokane (25-29) preserved its slim half-game edge over the Boise Hawks (25-30), who shut out Yakima 11-0.

Had the Indians lost to Tri City (24-31), Spokane would have dropped to third in the division.

The Indians needed a five-run rally in the bottom of the eighth inning to battle back from a five-run hole that starting pitcher Michael Main dug for them when he gave up four runs in the top of the third inning.

Main, newly promoted from the rookie leagues, started off strong in his Indians debut.

The right-hander retired the Dust Devils in order in the first, and got through the second inning in similar fashion, with one strikeout and two groundouts.

But things unraveled in the third when the rookie, who was drafted in the first round by the Texas Rangers this year, walked two batters in a row to load the bases.

Helder Velazquez’s hit drove in a pair of runs to get the Dust Devils going and Main dug himself an even deeper hole by walking the next batter and then giving up another two-run hit to Darin Holcomb.

“I came out in the first and second, hit my speeds and was feeling pretty good,” Main said. “But then in the third I just got a little inconsistent with my pitches. It wasn’t so much that I was nervous or anything, I just didn’t make the adjustments that I needed to.”

To their credit, the Indians hung with the Dust Devils and slowly chipped away at the deficit: In the fourth, catcher Jonathan Greene hit his 11th home run of the season off Tri-City’s Cory Riordan. Renny Osuna, Timothy Rodriguez and Matt Lawson also contributed run-scoring hits and put the Indians in position for their bottom-of-the-eighth rally.

Spokane got some help from the Dust Devils’ misfiring bullpen when reliever Augustine Arias walked two batters, loaded the bases twice and struggled to find the strike zone.

With the bases loaded and the Indians trailing 5-4, a Lawson single and a fielding error by Tri-City resulted in two runs and a 6-5 Spokane lead.

Mitch Moreland added some insurance runs when he smacked a triple to center field with the bases loaded to put Spokane up 9-5.

The insurance runs proved vital.

Thanks in part to a defensive error, reliever Tommy Hunter almost surrendered the lead when he loaded the bases and gave up two runs before Indians manager Tim Hulett brought Andrew Laughter in to close the game out.

Laughter allowed a hit, but finally cleaned up the mess he’d inherited and earned his seventh save of the season when Brian Aguilar popped out to end the game.

“It was a very important game for us,” Laughter said, “They beat us last night, and we had to come in and win tonight, so that’s what we did.”

“It was an important game for us in the sense that it was a close one, and winning this gave us some momentum,” Hulett said. “We’ve played well coming from behind lately, and have done a good job pecking way at the lead and staying in the game.”

The Indians wrap up the series against Tri-City tomorrow night at Avista Stadium.