By Ryan Zimmerman, Gary SouthShore RailCats

The Gary SouthShore RailCats (8-6) turned around an early deficit, but the Kane County Cougars (5-9) stormed back in the final four innings to pull off a 12-5 victory on Saturday afternoon at The Steel Yard.

Despite falling behind 1-0 after the first inning, the RailCats turned things around quickly thanks to three second-inning runs.  After a Francisco Del Valle single and Victor Nova walk, Marco Hernandez placed a triple past the diving Jonah Davis in right field and forced an errant throw allowed him to score on the play, snagging Gary SouthShore a 3-1 lead.

The ‘Cats got back to work offensively in their next turn at bat.  An Emmanuel Tapia sacrifice fly plated Gio Díaz, providing Gary SouthShore a 4-1 advantage.

Kane County lowered their deficit to two on a T.J. Bennet solo home run in the top of the fourth, but the RailCats responded swiftly.  Following a Del Valle base hit, Hernandez, the catcher, came through once more as he belted an RBI double down the left field line to restore the Gary SouthShore lead to three.  Hernandez’s two RBIs marked the first two of his RailCats career.

On the mound, Jack Eisenbarger made his first start of the 2023 and tossed a season high 3.2 innings, allowing just two runs and striking out five.  Joan Valdez took the baton out of the bullpen and allowed just one hit and one run in a season-high 2.2 innings, while picking up four strikeouts of his own.

However, down by three, the Cougars supplied 10 unanswered runs to vault their comeback bid.  They pulled within two on a run-scoring groundout in the sixth inning before erupting for five runs in the seventh along with four in the eighth to reverse the deficit and secure the win.

Gary SouthShore aims to bounce back in Sunday’s series finale.  First pitch between the RailCats and Cougars is at 6 p.m. from The Steel Yard. All the action can be found on aabaseball.tv and on over the radio on 95.9 WEFM and the Gary SouthShore RailCats Broadcast Network through the Mixlr app.