Wind Surge in first place after fourth walk-off win in Wichita with 481-foot home run
The Wichita Wind Surge are already becoming pretty familiar with walk-off wins at Riverfront Stadium.
For the second straight night, the Wind Surge celebrated a walk-off in style. Jose Miranda crushed a 481-foot blast tracked with an exit velocity of 110 mph out of the downtown ball park on Friday for a three-run home run in the 10th inning — the exclamation point in Wichita’s 8-5 win over the Arkansas Travelers.
Despite only playing three series totaling 16 games at home, the Wind Surge have already produced four walk-off wins — all in front of their home fans.
Miranda also delivered the first walk-off win back on May 13 when his sacrifice fly brought home the winning run against Amarillo. Gilberto Celestino, now starting in center field for the Minnesota Twins, hit a walk-off home run to win against Springfield on May 29. Then Jermaine Palacios provided the walk-off on Thursday with an RBI single in a 7-6 win over Arkansas.
In their first month on the schedule, Wichita’s first affiliated-baseball team in more than a decade currently sits in first place in the North division standings of the Double-A Central with a 17-11 record. More than half (9) of Wichita’s wins this season have been of the come-from-behind variety.
On Friday, Wichita trailed 4-1 after the top of the third inning, but clawed two back on a home run from Ernie De La Trinidad. After Arkansas extended its lead to 5-3, Wichita tied the game in the bottom of the seventh inning on a sacrifice fly from Caleb Hamilton.
After Arkansas scored all five runs on Wichita starter Cole Sands, the Wind Surge bullpen of Alex Phillips, Ryan Mason and Yennier Cano combined to pitch a scoreless final 5⅔ innings. That set up the heroics of Miranda in the bottom of the 10th inning, as he hit his team-leading seventh home run of the season.
Wichita will host the Arkansas Travelers, the Double-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, in the fifth game of the week-long series at 7 p.m. Saturday. It will be the highly-anticipated debut for starting pitcher Jordan Balazovic, the No. 4-rated prospect in the Twins’ organization who was recently activated from the injured list and will start for the first time in 2021 in Wichita.
This story was originally published June 5, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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