Somerset Patriots Series Recap Vs Reading Phils 5/5-5/10

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The Somerset Patriots spent most of the week in Reading looking like a lineup capable of

overwhelming anyone in the Eastern League.

The final two games, though, were a reminder that this is still a club trying to find steadier

footing.

Somerset split its six-game road series with the Reading Fightin Phils, winning three straight from Wednesday through Friday after dropping Tuesday’s opener before giving back the final two games over the weekend. The Patriots left FirstEnergy Stadium at 15-18 following Sunday’s

6-1 loss, but the week carried more weight than a simple split.

There was a franchise-record power barrage. Tyler Hardman became Somerset’s all-time hits leader. Jackson Castillo continued to look like one of the club’s most interesting emerging bats. Jace Avina found real traction at the plate. Gerrit Cole delivered another sharp rehab start.

The series ended even, but Somerset’s offense made sure the week felt bigger than that.

High Scoring Offense To Start the Series.

The Patriots lost Tuesday’s opener in Reading, 14-12, despite doing more than enough offensively to win. They finished with 19 hits, three home runs and a season-high 10 two-out runs, but an early 8-2 lead disappeared in a game that became a messy snapshot of both Somerset’s ceiling and its current volatility.

Marco Luciano homered in the first inning, Tyler Hardman went deep in the fourth, and Jace Avina added a solo shot in the fifth. Reading, though, answered with a six-run fourth inning before Dylan Campbell’s three-run homer in the eighth finally swung the game for good. It was a brutal loss, but not an empty one. Somerset’s lineup had again shown how quickly it can turn

traffic into damage.

Somerset came back on Wednesday with an 11-3 win, piling up 17 hits and four more home runs. Garrett Martin jumped Reading early with a two-run homer in the first and later added another, giving him his second multi-homer game of the season. DJ Gladney and Luciano also went deep, while Cade Smith gave the Patriots the kind of start they needed, allowing one run

and working into the sixth inning. Through two games, Somerset had 36 hits and seven homers, the most hits through the first two games of a series in franchise history.

The Pats rolled to an 11-0 win in their most complete performance of the week, pairing another relentless offensive night with a two-hit shutout from the pitching staff. The Patriots broke the game open with a seven-run third inning, sending 13 batters to the plate and turning the middle innings into a formality.

Coby Morales hit his eighth home run of the season, Martin homered for the second straight night, and Xavier Rivas delivered his best Double-A outing, setting career highs in innings,strikeouts, and pitches while allowing one hit over 4.1 scoreless frames. Through three games, Somerset had 49 hits, 34 runs, and nine homers, setting franchise records for hits and runs through the first three games of a series.

Friday’s win was not about overwhelming Reading early. It was about answering late. Trailing 5-1, Somerset scored five unanswered runs to steal a 6-5 win and stretch its winning streak to three games. Hardman cut into the deficit with a two-run homer in the sixth, and Avina tied the game with a two-run shot in the seventh.

From there, the bullpen handled the leverage. Ben Grable earned his first Double-A win, and Chris Kean nailed down his first career Double-A save. For a team that had let Tuesday’s opener get away, Friday mattered because it showed some late-game spine.

Milestone night for Hardman.

With a single and a two-run homer, Hardman passed Max Burt and Elijah Dunham to become Somerset’s all-time hits leader. He already held the franchise records for home runs and RBI, and the latest mark only further cemented him as one of the signature players of Somerset’s Yankees era.

At the time, Hardman was in the middle of a tear, slashing .513/.578/1.026 during his hit streak with six home runs, 16 RBI, and seven multi-hit games. That is not just a hot stretch. That is a player carrying an offense.

Weekend Fall-Off

Somerset’s 5-1 loss snapped its 14-game home run streak and ended a franchise-record run of 12 straight games with multiple homers. That streak was not just a club note, either. It was the longest multi-homer streak in Minor League Baseball dating back to at least 2005, and no Major

League team has ever reached 12 straight games with multiple home runs.

Kyle Carr took the loss, though his outing was much better than the result suggested. The left-hander struck out eight over six innings, retired the final 10 batters he faced, and continued a sharp two-start stretch in which he punched out 15 and walked just one over 12 innings. On a night when Somerset’s offense finally went quiet, Carr gave the Patriots a start worth taking forward.

The bats never really woke up Sunday, either as Somerset dropped the finale, 6-1, but the afternoon still came with another meaningful Gerrit Cole checkpoint. Making the fifth start of his Major League rehab assignment, Cole worked five innings and allowed three runs, two earned, on four hits with one walk and eight strikeouts. His 77 pitches and eight strikeouts were both rehab highs, and he retired 10 straight batters from the second through fifth innings. Across five rehab appearances between Somerset and Hudson Valley, Cole owns a 1.01 WHIP with 22 strikeouts and only two walks over 23.2 innings. That is exactly the kind of progress report the Yankees want before bringing him back to the Bronx.

Final Thoughts

Even with the weekend dip, the Patriots finished with 68 hits, the fourth-most in franchise history for a single series. The Patriots also extended their extra-base hit streak to all 33 games this season, tying them for the longest active streak in Double-A and the second-longest active run in Minor League Baseball.

The larger takeaway was not hard to find. Somerset’s lineup is legitimate. The Patriots just still need to find a cleaner way to win when the ball is not leaving the yard. Luciano continued to look like one of the most dangerous bats in the system, homering in three straight games earlier in the week and driving the ball with real authority. Martin’s power surge pushed him into the Eastern League home run lead during the series.

Avina, after a slow start, suddenly looked much closer to the impact bat Somerset expected. Castillo kept stacking hits and reached a 14-game hitting streak by Saturday, the longest active streak in the Eastern League at the time. Hardman turned the week into a personal franchise-history run.

The Patriots did not leave Reading with the series win they had within reach, but they left with proof that their best version can be a handful. The next step is the one that separates interesting teams from dangerous ones: stop flashing it for a few days at a time, and start stacking complete weeks.

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