Ballers sweep Ogden, outscore Raptors 37-21 in series
- Steve Bowles
- Jun 15
- 4 min read
LINDQUIST FIELD, OGDEN, UT — It was only a month ago that Noah Millikan, then a member of the Penn Quakers’ pitching staff, stood atop the mound at Bush Field in New Haven, Connecticut to face their Ivy rivals, the Columbia Tigers, pitching 5 1/3 innings in a 4-3 loss in what would be his final collegiate appearance.
Today, the Berkeley High grad toed the rubber in his professional debut, facing the Ogden Raptors. The six-foot-five righty threw four shutout innings, allowing just three hits while walking two and striking out three. What that statline doesn’t reveal, however, was his Houdini act to thwart an Ogden rally that could’ve changed the game’s tone.
In the fourth inning, with the bases drunk with Raptors and only one out, Millikan struck out Evan Blum and induced a harmless grounder from Kyler Stancato to end the threat. At the time, Oakland was clutching a 2-0 advantage, which in the hitter-happy Pioneer League is like holding up a papier-mâché sheet in the face of a bullet.
Unfortunately, the lead didn’t hold up for long, as Ogden scratched across a pair against reliever Alec Rodriguez, who faced four batters and recorded only a single out, and was charged with a trio of wild pitches, one of which scored Elliot Good with the first tally; a Chris Sargent single drove in the tying run and chased Rodriguez from the bump in favor of Caleb Franzen. Franzen was able to escape the jam with no further damage.
The score remained knotted until the top of the seventh, when the Ballers sent nine men to the dish, scoring four runs. The big blow was Michael O’Hara’s two-run single, plating Davis Drewek (whose bases-loaded walk brought in the frame’s first run) and Christian Almanza. The Oakland left-fielder had pushed across a run back in the second on a double-play, giving the B’s an early lead. Although he wasn’t credited with an RBI on that earlier GIDP, he effectively drove in three of the team’s seven runs.
The Raptors closed the gap to 6-4 in the home half of the seventh when Sargent swatted a two-run homer off Conner Richardson, but Chewy clamped off any further discussion of an Ogden comeback by retiring the next two hitters, punctuated by a strikeout of the dangerous Carmine Lane.
Oakland then added a run in the eighth on an Almanza RBI single, but left the bases loaded.
Connor Sullivan dispatched the Raptors one-two-three to finish off the game, and the B’s had a 7-4 decision in hand, sweeping the three-game weekend series.
Notes from the game - and the series
Cam Bufford was a menace. The Oakland third baseman went 4-for-5 with two runs scored in the finale; he batted .400 (6-for-15), with a homerun on Friday that burned up on reentry.
Oakland’s 15-run inning on Saturday night, a 22-11 victory was, somewhat unsurprisingly, the most scored in a single frame in the Pioneer League this year. (It was definitely the most runs I’ve ever seen in a single inning.)
How hot has Tremayne Cobb been this year? He took an 0-for-6 and his average plummeted all the way down to .372. He went 3-for-6 with four RBI during the rout on Saturday.
First base umpire Travis Schatzman was coming out of the restroom as I was entering during a between-innings break. He offered a quick “excuse me” and sauntered back to the field, his bladder sufficiently emptied. Life in the independent leagues…
Ogden reliever Jestin Jones, who threw a scoreless sixth inning in the Sunday finale, is a chronic hat-loser. His delivery is max-effort, and his long flowing locks cannot contain his headgear; every pitch he threw resulted in his cap flying off his head, and each time he would calmly bend down, retrieve it, and place it back atop his well-coiffed dome. Check out this TikTok he made during his Paddleheads days about his “hat problem.”
Lindquist Field is a top-tier minor-league baseball stadium. Built in 1997, it isn’t quite thirty years old but it feels like an old-school park in the best ways. Fatalist Raptors fans may very well dig the symbolism of a park named for a local mortuary, especially because the Raptors have not been good since winning the Pioneer League title in 2023. Still, it is seriously a great venue for baseball and I highly recommend it.
It was around ninety to ninety-two degrees for all three days; thus, I will be returning to the more temperate climes of the Bay Area with the skin complexion of a lobster. It’s also possible that I drank a little too much for these conditions.
What’s next for the Ballers?
The B’s (16-8) return home to face the Glacier Range Riders (10-14) for six games, June 17-22. They will then travel to Boise to face the Hawks (currently 13-11, about to hit the road to face the Great Falls Voyagers) to close out the month of June. Oakland will then play twelve straight against the currently first-place Rocky Mountain Vibes — six in Colorado, six at Raimondi — to open July.
留言