Eddy Alvarez homers twice for Oklahoma City, Gavin Stone tosses six scoreless for Tulsa

Thursday around the Dodgers minors saw a pair of big wins, a dominant pitching performance, a big night for a former Olympian and a blowout loss.

One item before we get to the minors action is pitcher Kyle Hurt. The right-hander was named Midwest League pitcher of the month after allowing one earned run in 19 innings, with 30 strikeouts for Great Lakes. The Dodgers promoted Hurt to Double-A earlier this week and he made his debut Wednesday.

Player of the day

Eddy Alvarez had a great first night back in Triple-A since June 2, going 4-for-5 with two homers and two singles. The utility man drove in five runs, accounting for nearly half of Oklahoma City’s runs Thursday.

Alvarez had only one career game with multiple homers coming into Thursday’s contest and that came all the way back in 2014 in Low-A for the White Sox.

Triple-A Oklahoma City

The Dodgers jumped out to an early lead and hit four homers in the process to slug their way to an 11-2 victory over Las Vegas (Athletics).

Oklahoma City sent seven men to the plate in the first inning, scoring four runs on a Michael Busch RBI-double and a James Outman three-run blast. After 16 long balls with Tulsa this season, the first inning homer was his first in his seventh game since his promotion to Triple-A.

That’s about the time when Alvarez took over on offense, stroking a two-run single in the second and a solo homer in each of the fourth and sixth innings. Alvarez added another RBI-single in the eighth to. are it a total of five runs driven in.

Outfielder Jason Martin hit his seventh homer in his last 11 games, a two-run shot in the fifth. Martin leads OKC with 17 total home runs this season and 38 of his 73 total hits this season have gone for extra bases.

Starter Sam Gaviglio worked around five hits and four walks to get through five scoreless innings and hand it to the bullpen with a 9-0 lead in place. A shaky sixth for OKC relievers resulted in two runs but that wasn’t nearly enough for Las Vegas.

Double-A Tulsa

Gavin Stone continued his dominant year in 2022, tossing yet another six scoreless innings to lead Tulsa to a 3-0 win over Northwest Arkansas (Royals).

The right-hander worked around six walks and three hits to keep the Naturals off the scoreboard, striking out eight hitters in the process. Including his time with High-A earlier this season, Thursday was Stone’s eighth start of at least five innings without allowing a single run to score and his sixth in nine starts with Tulsa.

Offense was tough to come by but Kody Hoese had given the Drillers a 1-0 lead in the first when he singled in Jeren Kendall. Tulsa pitching would’ve made that stand up but the Drillers scored two more in the eighth on a wild pitch and an RBI-single from Leonel Valera.

High-A Great Lakes

It was a rough night for Great Lakes on the mound as they gave up eight runs in the first three innings on their way to a 10-1 loss to Lansing (Athletics).

Cole Duensing opened for the Loons by walking the first batter he face before giving up hits to four of the next five hitters to give up three early runs.

Great Lakes sent Ben Casparius out to the mound in the second and the right-hander fared no better, allowing five more runs over the next two innings before settling in. Casparius made it through five innings of work and didn’t allow another run after the third.

But by then it was too late for the Loons to catch up.

Three of the six total hits for Great Lakes came in the first but a double play and a caught stealing put an end to any threat of scoring. The lone run for the Loons came in the ninth inning on an Imanol Vargas double to drive in Eddys Leonard.

Low-A Rancho Cucamonga

The Quakes scored exactly two runs in four different innings to pace their offense in a 10-6 win over Inland Empire (Angels) Thursday.

Yeiner Fernandez proved there was more than one in the organization who could drive in five runs on any given night, going 3-for-4 at the plate. Rancho’s catcher singled in runs in the first and sixth, brought in another on a sacrifice fly in the fourth and capped the scoring with a two-run homer in the eighth to put the game out of reach.

Austin Gauthier was also 3-for-4, driving in a run on a single in both the third and fourth innings.

Rancho actually trailed 5-3 after the third inning that saw Quakes’ pitching surrender four runs. But the bullpen gave up only one more over the six innings to secure the victory.

Transactions

Triple-A: Oklahoma City placed infielder Andy Burns on the temporarily inactive list.

Thursday scores

• Oklahoma City 11, Las Vegas 2
• Tulsa 3, NW Arkansas 0
• Lansing 10, Great Lakes 1
• Rancho Cucamonga 10, Inland Empire 6

Friday schedule

• 4:05p.m. PT: Great Lakes (Carlos Duran) at Lansing (Jack Owen)
• 5:05p.m.: Oklahoma City (Robbie Erlin) vs Las Vegas (Zach Logue)
• 5:05p.m.: Tulsa (TBD) at NW Arkansas (Noah Murdock)
• 7:05p.m.: Rancho Cucamonga (Jerming Rosario) at Inland Empire (Julio Goff)