What an exhilarating win that was last night. After some rocky starts during his rehab stint, Brayan Bello gutted out five emotional innings and the relief did not let up. What can that teach us about how Cooper Criswell gutted out five innings of his own last night? Well… we’ll let you be the judge. Let’s get into it.

Worcester: W, 5-0 (BOX SCORE)

It’s a small sample size, but Yasmani Grandal looks good enough to bring up an possibly take Blake Sabol’s spot. He added another home run last night against the Syracuse Mets and led Cooper Criswell to a fantastic outing. Criswell went five innings, allowed two hits, no runs or walks to speak of, and collected eight strikeouts. And he hardly discriminated: seven different Mets fell to a Criswell strike three. Speaking of guys fighting back to an MLB roster!

The WooSox pitching staff in full limited the Mets to just three hits on the night. In big three news: Marcelo Mayer got his fifth home run of the season to effectively end Hagenman’s outing and Roman Anthony capped off a dynamic fifth inning that saw the WooSox score all five of their runs with a double of his own. This was the WooSox’s fourth shutout this month and third in hardly a week.

Portland: W, 9-8 (BOX SCORE)

The duality of man: Password Garcia was called out on strikes three times but also had a clutch hit to fuel Portland’s five-run come-from-behind eighth inning, and scored the go-ahead run on a Blaze Jordan RBI single. The Fightin Phils took it to Yordanny Monegro early and often to drive him out after just seven outs; five of those outs were strikeouts, but this is a guy who put up some gutsy performances before his Double-A promotion last year and so it hurts to see him plateau a bit here. This was objectively his worst start of the year but I believe it’s more a snag than anything.

Greenville: L, 1-0 (BOX SCORE)

For those wondering where the heck Hub City is or what a Spartanburger is, I couldn’t tell you. But, following the Rangers’ minor league alignment that saw the Hickory Crawdads fall to low-A (more on them in a second) Spartanburg now has a team… and that team eeked out a win against the Drive in the series opener despite just three hits and 15 strikesouts. This was because the Drive had just three hits of their own, squandered all six opportunities they had to drive a run home, and had thirteen Ks on the night.

Salem: W, 12-6 (BOX SCORE)

The Crawdads are now in low A; this iteration of the Rangers’ A-team allowed two doubles to Freili Encarnacion, who I still truly believe is close to a promotion to Greenville, even if he did commit his sixth throwing error of the season: he’s learning first base and being a stud at the plate while doing so. Antonio Anderson also continues his great 2025 campaign with another double. The Red Sox subjected the Crawdads to a death by a million paper cuts; eight of their eleven hits were by singles and three of the five Red Sox who were issued walks ended up scoring. This game was a runaway before the Crawdads managed some garbage time runs.

Have a happy Wednesday!