The Eugene Emeralds had a chance to sweep the Spokane Indians and win a championship on Thursday at Avista Stadium. Instead, they lost 6-1, seeing their series lead fall to 2-1. The offense fell mostly quiet for the second straight night after an offensive explosion on Tuesday.

Before the game, catcher Ricardo Genoves was promoted to the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, while catcher Brandon Martorano was demoted to Eugene from Double-A Richmond. Martorano played in 25 games for the Emeralds during the regular season.

Kai-Wei Teng got the bump for Eugene and started off shaky. He gave up a double and a single with one out in the first, and a run-scoring groundout gave Spokane its first lead of the series. He gave up another single with two outs, but recorded a strikeout to prevent a big inning.

He came back out for the second inning and still wasn’t quite locked in. After a one-out walk, a groundout and a single made it 2-0.

The Emeralds got on the board in the fifth with a Jairo Pomares solo homer. Tyler Fitzgerald and Marco Luciano followed with back-to-back singles. Martorano doubled, but Fitzgerald was thrown out at the plate, halting the Emeralds’ comeback.

With the game still not out of reach, Teng settled in nicely. He didn’t allow another hit until the sixth inning, and made it through 6 1/3 with just the two runs recorded against him. Travis Perry replaced him in the seventh and gave up a run to make it a two-run game again.

With the offense still unable to get anything going, the game got out of hand in the eighth. Tyler Schimpf gave up a solo homer, and two runs scored later in the inning on an error by Fitzgerald. 

It was a sloppy, uninspired performance from the Emeralds as they couldn’t celebrate a championship just yet. They’ll look to take care of business and avoid a win-or-go-home Game 5, with Game 4 set to start at 6:30 p.m. on Friday.