Rafe Perich had already spent most of Wednesday night keeping Frisco close enough to make Midland uncomfortable. In the eighth inning, with the RoughRiders down three and the bases crowded again, he turned that pressure into a one-run game.
It still left Frisco a little short.
Perich’s two-out single to right in the eighth brought home Corey Joyce and Keith Jones II, pushed Marcus Lee Sang to third and pulled the RoughRiders within a run before Midland held on for a 6-5 win at Riders Field. Frisco loaded the bases in that inning, but Jake Garland got Dylan Dreiling to fly out to left, and Shohei Tomioka followed with a scoreless ninth for his seventh save.
The result left the RoughRiders with the hard part of a comeback story: plenty of fight, not quite enough finish.
Perich went 3-for-3 with two doubles, two walks and two RBIs, reaching in all five of his plate appearances. His night included a double in the third, another shot down the right-field line to open the seventh and the eighth-inning single that made the final inning matter. Frisco had nine hits, the same as Midland, and did not commit an error. But the difference was the one swing that turned an early RoughRiders lead into a hole they spent the rest of the night trying to climb out of.
Malcolm Moore gave Frisco the first jolt in the second inning, driving his third Double-A home run to center field. The ball carried deep enough that Cameron Leary ran out of room at the warning track, a 422-foot blast that gave the RoughRiders a 1-0 lead and made Jamie Arnold pay for one of the few early mistakes he left in the middle of the field.
Arnold otherwise piled up swing-and-miss. He struck out eight over 4.1 innings, though his four walks helped keep Frisco from disappearing after Midland took control.
The game flipped in the third against Blake Townsend. After two quick outs, Brennan Milone walked, Devin Taylor singled and Leo De Vries walked to load the bases. Cole Conn then drove a ball down the left-field line for a grand slam, his sixth homer of the season, and Midland had a 4-1 lead from a rally that had started with nobody on and two outs.
The RockHounds kept adding. Bobby Boser lifted a homer to left in the fourth to make it 5-1, and Conn doubled in the fifth before Clark Elliott lined a triple past a diving Lee Sang in right. Conn scored on the play, giving Midland a 6-1 lead and, eventually, the run that stood as the margin.
Townsend took the loss after allowing six earned runs over five innings. Chris Martin had opened the game with one scoreless rehab inning and struck out two before Townsend entered in the second. Once the deficit was set, Eric Loomis and Austin Roberts kept Frisco in it by combining for three scoreless relief innings with five strikeouts.
That mattered because the RoughRiders did not let Arnold cruise through the fifth. Frainyer Chavez and Perich walked to open the inning, and Arturo Disla followed with a soft grounder through the right side that scored both runners. Frisco had cut the deficit to 6-3 and still had traffic, but Stevie Emanuels entered and got Julian Brock to ground into an inning-ending double play.
Perich opened the seventh with his second double of the night and reached third on Disla’s groundout, but Jay Dill stranded him there with consecutive strikeouts. The RoughRiders got their last real push an inning later against Micah Dallas, when Joyce walked, Jones singled and Lee Sang walked. Frainyer Chavez struck out, but Perich lined his single into right to make it 6-5. Disla then walked to load the bases again before Garland escaped.
Tomioka gave Midland the clean finish the RockHounds needed. He struck out Moore to begin the ninth, got Brock on a grounder to short and ended it by striking out Joyce.
Conn finished 3-for-4 with a homer, a double and three total hits for Midland. Perich matched him as the game’s best offensive force from the Frisco side, but the RoughRiders were left with a familiar, frustrating line: the rally was real, the tying run reached third, and the last step never came.