Arroyo’s big night lifts AquaSox to 8-1 win over Tri-City

EVERETT — Lazaro Montes just couldn’t let Michael Arroyo enjoy the moment.

When Arroyo hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the fifth inning against the Tri-City Dust Devils to continue his torrent month of June on Friday, he joined Montes atop the Northwest League leaderboard with his 13th home run of the season, giving Everett a 4-1 lead.

In the next at-bat, before Arroyo had time to let his newfound status sink in, Montes sent a 2-0 pitch over the highest part of the right-center field wall to restore his sole lead atop the home run leaderboard with his 14th of the season.

Of course, neither player cares about the raw numbers. Each wants to see the other succeed as much as himself.

“No, it’s no (competition) because he’s my brother, you know?” Arroyo said. “He’s my team, he’s my partner, my friend. There’s no compete, (I) only have fun with him.”

Montes may have pushed Arroyo back into second place, but with the way the 20-year-old infielder is playing at the moment, nothing can keep him down.

In the bottom of the sixth, with Charlie Pagliarini on base, Arroyo belted the first pitch he saw out of right-center field, extending the AquaSox lead to 7-1 with his second home run of the night and fourth over the past three days. He rejoined Montes atop the leaderboard with his 14th home run of the season.

Including a two-run RBI double in the first inning — where he extended his hitting streak to 10 games — Arroyo finished the night with a career-high six RBI while going 3-for-4 with two home runs.

“Crazy, crazy. I mean, Arroyo is crazy,” said Montes, who went 2-for-4 with a home run and two runs scored. “He made everything look easy, bro.”

On the back of Arroyo and six innings of three-hit ball from Everett starter Ryan Hawks, the AquaSox won 8-1 against Tri-City, their fourth win in the past five games.

“Anytime you have Arroyo and (Montes) back-to-back, like you said, it puts a lot of pressure on their pitching staff,” AquaSox manager Zach Vincej said. “Definitely a threat in the middle of the order, especially when we have guys like (Colt) Emerson and ‘Pags’ (Pagliarini) and all those guys getting on base for those guys. It’s huge.”

It was a career-night for Arroyo, but it was just the latest installment of his elite play. Since the calendar flipped to June, the Cartagena, Colombia native has been red-hot, slashing .412/.545/.971. Only Spokane’s Charlie Condon, the 2024 third overall pick to Colorado, has a higher batting average this month (.463) in the entire Northwest League.

Over the past 15 days, Arroyo has hit a league-high seven home runs, which is half his season total. His 1.421 OPS in that time frame is 260 points higher than Condon (1.161), who ranks second. The gap between the two is about the same as the one between Condon and Tri-City’s Matt Coutney, who ranks 15th with .891. After starting the season 0-for-11 and ending April with a .195 average, Arroyo completely turned his season around.

“Nothing has changed really,” Arroyo said via the translation of bench coach Hecmart Nieves. “(I) just keep a positive attitude, just go out there and compete. The thing (I’m) looking for is just to be aggressive at the plate, and it’s translating so far.”

During Arroyo’s early slump, the coaching staff focused on keeping him positive and confident, with the knowledge that proper preparation and taking things day by day would help turn things around.

“He’s been one of our hardest workers, so I’m not surprised,” Vincej said. “I think there’s obviously, you know, some growing involved in the last couple years, but he’s done a tremendous job with the maturity of dealing with some failure and coming back from it and keep working hard. He’s been outstanding, so I’m super proud of him.”

Arroyo opened the scoring in the bottom of the first for the second game in a row. With runners on second and third, he rolled a ball down the third base line, where it bounced off the bag and into the outfield to clear the bases with a double.

Coutney cut it to 2-1 for the Dust Devils with a solo home run to left field in the top of the fourth. Rio Foster almost tied it with a would-be homer near the same spot in the fifth, but it stayed in the park for a single after Anthony Donofrio played it cleanly. Hawks caused Arol Vera to hit into a double play in the next at-bat to escape the inning.

“I knew (Foster) hit it hard,” Hawks said. “I thought the launch angle was a little low. I was pretty sure we were going to get it off the wall, but shout out to Donofrio for making that play, holding him at first, and a couple pitches later, we rolled the ground ball.”

After Arroyo and Montes went back-to-back in the bottom of the fifth to add insurance, Arroyo pushed it to 7-1 with another two-run blast in the sixth. This time, Montes followed it up with a double.

“(Hitting behind Arroyo) is really easy because if he don’t do a homer, he gets hit by pitch,” said Montes, referring to Arroyo’s third-inning plate appearance. “He is at first base, so I now I got (an) opportunity, so I can do it for RBI.”

Hawks continued to shut down the Dust Devils, building off the momentum from his seven-inning, no-hit outing against Eugene on June 6. The AquaSox relievers Charlie Beilenson, Tyler Cleveland, Brock Moore and Gabriel Sosa did not allow a hit across the final three innings, although Tri-City loaded the bases in the top of the ninth with two walks and a hit by pitch.

Ultimately, no damage was done, and Tai Peete’s RBI single in the bottom of the eighth set up the 8-1 final.

“We’re in sync together, it’s a lot of fun,” Hawks said. “We’ve had stretches where the hitters have been swinging and the arms haven’t been doing our job, and vice versa. We’ve been throwing good and they have been swinging, so to kind of put it together here in this late (first-half) push, it’s an awesome time.”