Bucks rally late

The Thunder Bay Border Cats are trying to play spoiler in the Northwoods League’s North Division first-half race

They just didn’t do a very good job at it Thursday night in their return to Subway Field, a game delayed 50 minutes by rain.

Will Sparks singled up the middle with one out in the eighth off Cats reliever Zach Thiac, driving home Chesny Young and David Kerian, handing the first-place hopeful Waterloo Bucks a 6-4 win in front of 460 soggy fans.

The win vaulted Waterloo (19-9) into top spot, a half a game ahead of the Willmar Stingers (19-10), who fell 3-2 to Duluth. The Cats, at 11-18, remained buried in seventh place.

Border Cats manager Dan Holcomb, whose team is expecting mound reinforcements by the weekend, looking to improve on staff ERA that climbed to 5.96 before Thursday’s loss, said being spoilers isn’t exactly what the team was hoping for at this stage of the season.

But it’s a role they won’t shy away from either, he added.

“I think so,” he said. “Obviously anytime a team’s had your number, you want to take one or two from them and be able to get that kind of redemption from the previous games that we’ve played them. Knowing that we don’t really have Waterloo that many times in the second half, we need to take our chances when we can.”

The Bucks took the lead in the third, after Thunder Bay starter John Hayes escaped trouble in the first and second on a pair of inning-ending double plays.

John Ziznewski doubled home Connor McClain from first with the game’s opening run. Then the slippery conditions got the best of Hayes, who made back-to-back throwing errors that allowed Ziznewski to score the go-ahead run. The Bucks added one more in the third to take a 3-1 lead.

“It was a tough night for them, especially with the wet ball and that, but we don’t make excuses for them,” Holcomb said. “Obviously they made the throws. We have to as well. I thought we overcame the ones early. We were able to keep it tied up and have the lead after those errors. But when you have too many of them, obviously they’ll come back to bite you.”

The Cats took that lead in the fourth.

Jacob Rogers doubled home Jason Vosler for the Cats second run, then came home on a bases-loaded balk by Waterloo starter Taylor Byrd, a teammate of Thiac at Nicholls State University.

Tyler Stetson reached on an error by Kerian that scored Brad Burcoff from third, but the rally was snuffed out when Alex Bautista also attempted to score on the play, and instead was gunned down at the plate on a diving tag by Bucks catcher Jake Mahon.

Thiac (L, 2-1), took over in the seventh, with one out and a runner on first, but couldn’t shut the charging Bucks down. Kerian chopped a single up the middle to score Ziznewski with the tying run. Thiac found more trouble in the eighth, loading the bases with one out.

Vosler came to his rescue, leaning into the Waterloo dugout to snag the third out of the inning.

The Bucks struck again in the ninth and turned to closer Adam Dian, who hadn’t allowed a run in 9.1 innings this year.

Dian struck out the side in order to preserve the win, picking up his sixth save of the season.

Cat tracks: The Border Cats prior to the game held a moment of silence in memory of former employee Larry Larivee. The 26-year-old Larivee drowned last week while swimming in the MacKenzie River.