St. Paul – It wasn’t a pleasant day for baseball at CHS Field, with temperatures feeling over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, the St. Paul Saints battled their way to a walk off victory after a improbable comeback in a three and a half hour affair.
The Saints looked like they would be adding another blowout loss to their record in the seventh inning of Sunday’s game. Things looked especially dire when the inning started with Randy Dobnak giving up back-to-back singles and allowing a walk to the Worcester Woo Sox eight through one hitters.
Worcester was already up 9-2 at this point and then had the bases loaded with nobody out.
Still, Dobnak escaped the jam.
He struck out Jhostynxon Garcia looking on a full count 94.1 MPH fastball, then got Kristian Campbell and Vaughn Grissom to fly out to shallow right field, preventing any opportunity for the runner on third to tag up and make it 10-2.
Dobnak’s final line on the day wasn’t pretty: five hits and four walks allowed two runners to score in his four innings of work. It took him 77 pitches to get 12 outs. Still, instead of dwelling on those numbers, he’s building confidence off of how he ended his day in the seventh.
“Getting out of that bases-loaded, no-out jam kind of sparked a little something,” Dobnak said postgame. “Kept us in the game. So, if I can take any positive, it’s that. And then my last pitch was my hardest pitch of the year.”
He topped out at 94.7 MPH to get the Grissom flyout. The Saints still had a large run deficit to close the gap on, but they had Payton Eeles leading off their half of the seventh, which was all the hope they needed.
“Yesterday, Eddie (Julien) gets that big home run, and then we get a couple more to add to it,” Eeles said on the Saints’ performance Saturday. “And then today it’s like, ‘Dang it, man. We gave up a lot of runs early. It seems like they’re hitting everybody we throw out there.’
Eeles was 3-for-3 in the game with two stolen bases at that point. He took a few pitches at the plate before making contact off of Austin Adams‘s slider to get his fourth hit of the day. Carson McCusker struck out, but Jonah Bride followed up with a walk, then a double from Ryan Fitzgerald brought Eeles around to score.
It was now a 9-3 game. Jose Miranda was the next batter up, and the only hitter other than Eeles to get the Saints a hit in the first six innings. He hits his second single of the day to bring Bride around to score. Now the Saints trailed 9-4.
The next at-bat, the newest St. Paul Saint, Jhonny Pereda, drew a walk and set up a bases-loaded situation for Will Holland, their No. 9 hitter. Holland came to the plate with a purpose in his swing to make this a one-run game.
He fouled two hard-hit balls 20 feet and a little too far left of the left field foul pole for a potential grand slam, which would have made it 9-8. Fortunately for the Saints, he still managed to get an RBI single and move the runners from station to station. Suddenly, it’s a 9-5 game, and the Woo Sox have called to the bullpen with Austin Martin coming to the plate.
Martin had enough time to study the new pitcher, Alex Hoppe, from the on-deck circle as he warmed up. He picked up on something that played well into his advantage and gave the Saints the swing they needed to make it a much closer game.
“I knew he was going to try and get into the zone early,” said Martin. “It was on the fastball for sure, but just watching him warm up, it didn’t look like he had too much of a feel for his offspeed, so I was just looking for the fastball up there, and then he threw it. I was ready for it, and it just ended up finding a hole.”
Martin ended up pulling the ball just fair down the third base line. It had enough of a spin to roll into the left field corner and gave Miranda, Pereda, and Holland all the opportunity to score as Martin cashed in their runs for a bases-clearing three RBI double. The Saints now trailed by one, but would still need to get three or six outs to win this one.
“A-Mar had a huge double, I mean, Will almost hit like three grand slams,” said Luke Keaschall on the Saints’ seventh inning. “So the boys never backed down, and it’s pretty cool when you come back and win like that.”
Their bats didn’t show up in the eighth, but the Saints brought Erasmo Ramirez into the game to start the inning on the mound. He allowed a lead-off walk to the Woo Sox DH Nate Eaton, but settled in and retired the next three batters on only 12 pitches.
He stayed in to pitch the ninth and retired the minimum on 13 more pitches. Now it fell on St. Paul’s lineup to pull off another big comeback, as they had the night before.
Miranda got things going again with his third hit of the day to lead off the ninth, and Anthony Prato came in to pinch run for him. Former Saints pitcher Hobie Harris was on the mound for Worcester, and he retired Pereda on a flyout in the next at-bat. That brought Edouard Julien into the game as a pinch hitter for Holland.
He didn’t have the same power as he had on Saturday, but Julien laced a single to the opposite field to move Prato from first to third and provide Martin with another big opportunity to get some runs in. Martin was itching to end the game right there, but had to settle for an RBI fielder’s choice that at least tied it up 9-9.
“My intent was not trying to do too much, just try to move the ball forward,” Martin said. “When you put the ball in play, good things happen.”
Keaschall was the next batter. He had been 0-for-5 on the day, reaching base only once on a fielder’s choice in the fourth. It was far from the day he was hoping to have at the plate the day after he returned to the infield. After overcomplicating his approach in earlier at-bats, Keaschall remained present in a big moment.
He was so focused that he made contact on a cutter well outside the strike zone, flipping it over shortstop Nick Sogard’s head. It landed in left field to score Julien and give the Saints the 10-9 win.
“Sometimes when you try too hard, the game has a way of kicking you in the butt. I tried to let the game come to me a little bit more as the game went on and ended up working out in my last at-bat,” Keaschall said on his walk-off hit. “I went into that at-bat being as confident as I could be. I 100% had the confidence to execute it, it’s just you have to stay present, keep believing in yourself.”
What felt like an insurmountable deficit became one of St. Paul’s best comeback victories of the season. It was the first time Keaschall had a walk-off winner since the Twins drafted him in 2023. After missing nearly three months with a broken forearm, it was not only rewarding for him, but also the whole clubhouse, as they ended a bad series by taking not just one, but two games against the Woo Sox.
“It was cool for a guy like him,’ said Saints manager Toby Gardenhire. “He’s another who’s been sitting on the bench hurt for a long time, who just wants to play. So for him, there’s going to be some rust. He’s working himself out. But for him to go out there and get a walk-off hit today was pretty cool.”
“In a long season, you’re going to have eves and flows,” Martin said. “You’re going to have weeks like what we had just this past week, but I think the biggest thing is the fact that we were able to come from behind in both wins. I think that shows a lot about the guys we have on the team, the guys we have in the clubhouse.”
Keaschall will remain with the Saints on his rehab assignment as they travel to Toledo for a six-game series against the Mud Hens. The Saints are now 13-14 in the second half, and sit eight and a half games behind the league-leading record in the International League. If they secure the top record in the division, they will advance into the Triple-A playoffs.