RENO " The Aces gave away plenty of free passes in the third inning Thursday afternoon, and appeared headed to their second straight loss.
Reno walked 10 batters in Wednesday's 14-6 loss, which snapped its five-game win streak, and were on the same track Thursday when starting pitcher Hector Ambriz gave up two walks in the third and issued a grand slam.
But an early 4-0 deficit lit a fire under the Aces' bats in the bottom of the inning as they scored seven runs on eight hits en route to a 7-6 win at Aces Ballpark.
"That's one thing, they don't think about the (last) game," Aces manager Brett Butler said. "When the game's over, they say, 'OK, we're going to win today.' And it was ugly. That was the ugliest loss that we had and this today will be the ugliest win that we've had all year. So you've got both sides of it. The bottom line is those teams that can make the adjustment are the ones that can prevail and are able to have a good year and that's what we're trying to do."
With six wins in five games, the Aces (21-26) climbed out of the cellar in the Pacific Coast League's Pacific Division cellar. They will go back on the road today when they faces Salt Lake at 6:05 p.m. as part of an 11-game road trek, their biggest road swing of the year.
Other than the five walks he issued, Ambriz threw another good game in his first win of the season (1-2). He allowed just two hits in six innings and of the four runs he gave up, two were put on base by walks. He issuedfive walks in the game.
"I didn't get some calls, but I didn't make some pitches with those five walks," Ambriz said. "If you're going to start in baseball, you can't give up five walks. You've got to make them earn their hits so that was my fault there."
The game marked the second start that Ambriz has had to contend with a subpar defense behind him. In his last start on May 23, the defense committed three errors, in a no-decision, 6-4 victory. The Aces had four Thursday with two of those coming from first baseman Josh Whitesell.
"That's baseball," Ambriz said. "You're going to walk some people, you're (team is) going to make some errors, you're going to hit some people. Bugsey (Butler) talks to me a lot. You've got to keep your composure, you've got to take a deep breath and go after the next guy."
Bobby Korecky picked up a five-out save. He nearly blew the save in the ninth after he walked Brandon Boggs on five pitches and Royce Huffman hit a deep fly to right that sent Alex Romero to edge of the warning track for the second out of the inning.
The Aces dug themselves out of a hole after Nate Gold's grand slam. Consecutive singles by Abraham Nunez and Brandon Watson and a walk to Ruben Gotay loaded the bases in the bottom of the third. Romero, who was 3-for-4 on the day with two RBIs, followed with a right side for a two-RBI double to make it 4-2.
Whitesell just missed a home run that traveled a few feet foul down the right side before he hit a sacrifice fly to left to score Gotay. John Hester then hit an infield single down the third baseline and Trent Oeltjen singled up the middle to score Romero and tie the game at 4.
The final dagger came when Chris Roberson hit a bases-loaded triple to the gap in left center that was just a foot outside of the grasp of the Redhawks' Brandon Boggs. The hit cleared the bases and gave the Aces a 6-4 lead. Bryan Byrne followed with a run-scoring single to complete the seven-run barrage.
"This is huge," Oeltjen said of the win. "We go on a five-game streak and now to get back on it is really huge. We were just executing, that's why we won all of those games. I think when it comes down to the clutch we come through and get the runners in when we need to and get the pitching when we need to as well. So we're coming together as a unit."