Furious Syracuse rally in ninth comes up just short in 10-9 loss to Rochester on Thursday night Rochester, NY – The Syracuse Salt Potatoes scored four runs in the ninth and had the tying run at third base, but the comeback fell short as the Rochester Plates beat the Salt Potatoes, 10-9, in the second game of the Duel of the Dishes. The win means the Plates win the Duel of the Dishes series in 2022 and the eight-foot Golden Fork. The Plates smashed 15 hits on their way to victory. Syracuse (26-42) trailed Rochester, 10-5, going into the top of the ninth inning. Khalil Lee led off with a walk, Mark Vientos singled, and Travis Blankenhorn walked to load the bases. Nick Dini followed with a single that scored Lee to make it a 10-6 ballgame. After a Fargas strikeout, a red-hot Quinn Brodey came to the plate and kept the magic going, lining a triple all the way to the wall in right-center field that cleared the bases and cut the deficit to one, 10-9, in the blink of an eye. The Stanford baseball alum has hits in each of the last four games, going a combined 5-for-16 with a double, two triples, a home run, and five RBIs. So, Brodey was standing at third base with one out, 90 feet away from dramatically tying the game at ten in the ninth inning. Then, disaster happened. Cody Bohanek struck out swinging on a ball in the dirt, and as he did so, Brodey took off for home, got caught up in a run down in the process, and was tagged out to end the game with Rochester escaping with a 10-9 win by the skin of its teeth. Rochester (39-30) wasted no time getting the scoring going in what would turn out to be a slugfest of a baseball game. In the bottom of the first, two singles plus an error scored Joey Meneses for a 1-0 Plates lead In the second, three singles, including an RBI hit from Andrew Stevenson, plated Nick Banks in the second to make it a 2-0 ballgame. A four-run fourth inning for the Red Wings pushed them to a seemingly insurmountable 6-0 lead as five hits brought all the tallies home. With two outs, Ildemaro Vargas had an RBI single, Meneses had an RBI double, Josh Palacios had an RBI single, and Jake Noll had an RBI single all in a row to give Rochester the 6-0 edge. Meneses has played brilliantly against Syracuse this season, batting .321 (18-for-56) with nine extra-base hits and 16 RBIs. The Salt Potatoes change the trajectory of the game quickly in the top of the fifth. Syracuse loaded the bases with one out via walks by Lee and Vientos plus a single from Travis Blankenhorn. Then, Nick Dini brought everyone home, lining a laser-beam drive over the left-field wall for a grand slam that pulled the Salt Potatoes within two, 6-4. Dini now has six home runs in 25 games played with Syracuse this season. In the next three innings, the Plates scored another bunch of runs to apparently put the game away. Single runs in the fifth and sixth plus two more runs in the seventh ballooned the lead back to six runs at 10-4. Andrew Stevenson drove in three of the runs, first with an RBI single in the fifth followed by a two-run home run over the right-field wall in seventh. Stevenson finished the game 3-for-5 at the plate with four RBIs. The former LSU Tiger is now batting .304 (14-for-46) against the Mets this season. Syracuse cut into the six-run Rochester lead with one swing of the bat in the eighth. Johneshwy Fargas led off with a solo home run over the left-field wall to make it a five-run hill to climb for the Mets going into the game’s final frame trailing, 10-5, before Syracuse’s late rally came up just short. Syracuse continues its 12-game, two-week road trip on Friday against the Rochester Red Wings. Right-hander Trevor Cahill is slated to start for the Mets, opposed by right-hander Jefry Rodriguez for the Red Wings. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.