Louisville Slugger Field - Louisville Bats

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (NYY) @ Louisville Bats (CIN)

June 19, 2025

Bats 6, RailRiders 3

W: Yosver Zulueta
L: Brent Headrick

S: Zach Maxwell

HR: T.J. Rumfield (SWB), Ryan Vilade (LOU)

Attendance: 4,065
Time of Game: 2 hours, 28 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Louisville, KY
Opened: 2000
Capacity: 13,131
Level: Triple A
League: International

After an unexpected day off due to a rainout in Dayton, I drove Southwest across the Ohio River into Kentucky where I ultimately settled in Louisville.  I wish I had known ahead of time that there would be no game played in Dayton on Wednesday because I really would have liked to have spent an extra day checking out all there is to see in Louisville.  I was able to sneak in a visit to Churchill Downs, but didn't have time to make it to the Louisville Slugger museum or do a bourbon tasting tour on Whiskey Row in downtown Louisville.

Louisville Slugger Field is located right on Main Street in downtown Louisville, near the East end of Whiskey Row.  It is located just a couple blocks from the Ohio River.  From most vantage points within the stadium, you get a great view of a couple of the bridges crossing the river into Indiana.  Really, there is great scenery looking out from pretty much anywhere in the stadium.  From points in the outfield, you can see the downtown skyline.  The ballpark is built right up against an old brick warehouse.  In fact, the main entrance to the park is actually inside of this building.  Also housed in that building is an active brewery.  First one of those I can recall seeing on site at a minor league park.  A very spacious concourse encircles the entire park.  Traditional stadium seating covers almost all of the foul territory on the lower level, even circling around to left field, providing ample outfield seating to go along with lawn seating in left center and picnic, patio and bar seating covering all of right field.  There is a pretty substantial amount of upper deck seating available as well.  The stadium's capacity of over 13,000 makes it one of the larger parks I've been to the past couple years.  There was not a terribly large crowd on this particular night though despite ideal baseball weather.  If you include the Dayton game that got rained out, this was the only one of the first five stops on my trip that didn't have a near capacity crowd.

Cam Schlittler got the start for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in this one.  He is expected to make his MLB debut for the Yankees sometime later this week.  I saw him pitch for High A Hudson Valley last August, so that will be three promotions in less than a year for Schlittler, a pretty meteoric rise.  He was quite impressive on this night before hitting a bit of a wall in the fifth inning.  His 97-99 MPH fastball was giving Bats hitters fits through the first four innings.  The first time through the order, six of the nine Bats hitters struck out.  Eventually, Schlittler would strike out nine to just one walk in his five innings.  The RailRiders got on the board first.  Following a two out walk, T.J. Rumfield blasted a two run homer to left.  The Bats answered in the fifth.  Schlittler issued his only walk of the game to start the inning.  That runner came in to score on a slow infield chopper base hit by veteran infielder Jeimer Candelario.  The Reds would DFA Candelario a few days later, so I saw what was presumably one of his last games in their organization.  Two batters later, Rece Hinds tied the game by ending a nine pitch at bat with another chopper that found a hole for a base hit.  The RailRiders quickly retook the lead though in the sixth on a sacrifice fly by one time Cubs top prospect Brennan Davis.  In the bottom of the sixth, the Bats took advantage of Schlittler no longer being in the game with their first authoritative run of the game.  Ryan Vilade started the frame with a home run to left center to tie the game at three.  They then added an unearned run in the seventh and two more runs in the eighth.  Louisville won this one by a final score of 6-3.

After a fun day in Louisville, it was up to Northern Indiana in a ballpark I had been many times before in South Bend on Friday night.  With the exception of the first and last days of the trip, that Louisville to South Bend drive was my longest of the trip.

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Next ballpark: Four Winds Field in South Bend, IN