J.J. Furmaniak’s 11th inning double gave the Durham Bulls their eighth straight victory, a 2-1 road win over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs on Thursday.

• Photo courtesy Durham Bulls
• Bulls infielder J.J. Furmaniak

The Bulls scored their only run in regulation in the sixth as Angel Chavez led off with a single, followed by bunt singles from Jose Lobaton and Fernando Perez and an RBI grounder from Desmond Jennings.

John Mayberry’s homer in the ninth for Lehigh Valley sent the game into extra innings.

The series finale is on Friday, after which the Bulls will visit Pawtucket for four before returning home Aug. 5 against Indianapolis.

Dan Johnson had two hits and an RBI for the Durham Bulls, leading them to a 3-2 road decision over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs that was their seventh straight victory.

• Photo courtesy Durham Bulls
• Bulls infielder Dan Johnson

Joe Dillon was the only other Bull with two hits, while Elliot Johnson doubled.

The Bulls won despite solo homers from Andy Tracy and Melvin Dorta, each of whom finished with two hits.

Game 3 of the four-game set is Thursday morning.

Justin Ruggiano’s three-run homer in the ninth provided the difference as the Durham Bulls got their road trip off on the right foot with a 5-3 win over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.

• Photo courtesy Durham Bulls
• Bulls outfielder Justin Ruggiano

Scott Mathieson (3-4) took the loss.

Elliot Johnson had three hits including a double for the Bulls, while Lobaton added two hits.

Dominic Brown led Lehigh Valley with a triple and a single for two RBI.

Game 2 of the four-game set is Wednesday night.

• photo courtesy of Durham Bulls
• 24th-man Omar Luna is batting .367 as a Bull

Jones's ERA jumped from an already bad 6.21 to an unthinkable 9.31; what's more, he had allowed five runs in the first and only inning of his previous start at Norfolk, so Jones has now given up 15 runs in his last 1 2/3 innings of work. That works out to an ERA of 79.41. Dizzying stuff. To quote someone who knows a bit about hits, Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? By way of figuring it out, Jones (or his representative in the Chiefs' clubhouse) called the Press Box to request a copy of the game film. Really, Jason, any old horror flick will do.

In Jones's defense, only four of the hits he allowed were hit hard. Most were just dribblers and bleeders that found holes in the infield. More remarkably, he threw first-pitch strikes to every single batter he faced. (Leatherman did the same for the rest of the inning, a remarkable 15 first-pitch strikes in a row.) But when, later on in the home team's clubhouse, Jones's outrageous misfortune prompted me to admit that I felt kind of bad for him, three different Bulls shot me raised-eyebrow looks. "They don't feel bad for us when we strike out," one of them said. Dan Johnson, for his part, had no pity on Jones's weak, hanging 2-1 curveball that he hit into the right-field seats to make it 4-0 before a single out had been recorded. It wasn't a good pitch. "I didn't think so," Johnson said, a glint in his eye, smirking. It's sports, kids. You don't feel bad for losers. You beat them. (And for what it's worth, I was reminded after the game that the Bulls faced Jones twice last year, and beat him once. All I can say is that last night probably would have been even worse for Jones had the Bulls still had Ray Sadler (scroll down a bit if you follow that link.)

With the win, the Bulls swept Syracuse, which looked resigned and aloof by the last game of the series. (Durham took seven of eight from the Chiefs in the regular season, outscoring them 56-19.) Durham went 6-2 for the homestand, improved to a season-high 22 games over .500, and left their mini-slump somewhere in a forgotten, ungrazed pasture. Charlotte lost again, and the Bulls now have an 11-game lead in the South Division with 40 to play.

Overshadowed by the Bulls' outburst was a fine pitching performance by Virgil Vasquez, who rebounded from a pair of poor starts with a new wrinkle. More on that, and some notes, after the jump. Before we make it, though, congratulations to Tampa Bay Ray Matt Garza, who evened out all the hitting last night by throwing the franchise's first ever no-hitter. What made it sweeter still, especially for Bulls' fans, was that his mound opponent, the Detroit Tigers' Max Scherzer, was tossing his own no-hitter for 5 2/3 innings. But he loaded the bases with a pair of walks and a catcher's interference call, and Matt Joyce made the Rays' first hit of the game a grand slam home run. Joyce, you may recall was traded to the Rays last year from... the Detroit Tigers. So all seems to be right, right now, in the Durham-Tampa corridor, where all involved are pleasantly tangled up in blue. And you can add the Rays' Double-A affiliate to the skein: The Montgomery Biscuits had an eight-run second inning to fry the Carolina Mudcats last night.

• Richard De Los Santos extended his scoreless streak to 12 innings last night

Downs evened the count at 2-2 and then got Bynum to ground out to third. But then he fell behind Leonard Davis, 2-0 again, and this time paid for it in karma (or luck): Davis hit a chopper past the mound, but it bounced so slowly that the charging Omar Luna's throw was too late to first base and Davis had an infield hit.

Luis Ordaz flied to right field on a 2-2 pitch, so Downs was one out away from finishing off the inning. But Pete Orr came to the plate looking for a fastball, and he lined the first pitch he saw from Downs into left for a single. That brought the tying run to the plate.

Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo was taking no chances. Joe Bateman had started warming up in the bullpen as soon as the inning began, a sign that Downs was on a short leash, and Montoyo used it: He cut Downs's inning short and sent in Bateman, who struck out the Chiefs' ninth-place hitter, Carlos Maldonado. End of inning.

End of game, too, for a couple of reasons: 1) Although the Bulls failed to score yet another runner from third with less than two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, they broke through for two runs in the eighth on Dioner Navarro's rope of a double, making it 5-0 and essentially icing the game. 2) Two batters later, the storm heralded by the winds erupted—and how—resulting in the eventual cutting short of the ballgame. The storm was brief but intensely powerful (watching the grounds crew trying to get the billowing tarp down was probably the highlight of the evening); even though the tempest came and went in a matter of perhaps 20 minutes, the field was drenched and water had pooled in many different places (the bullpens were uninhabitable). It would probably have taken 45 minutes or more to restore the field to playable condition. At about 10:15, the chief of the umpiring crew, Damien Beal, called it off. The 5-0 score became final.

It was just as well. The game was in hand. Why bother waiting until after 11:00 to notch four more outs, for the viewing pleasure of perhaps 100 remaining fans? And for that matter, one couldn't help thinking, why should the Bulls bother playing out the rest of the regular season? Yes, of course that's a ludicrous suggestion—there are players to develop here—but the team seems to have recovered from its post-All-Star-break mini-slump, and with help from the once-surging Charlotte Knights, who fell into their own trough after taking three of four from Durham last weekend, the Bulls have pushed their South Division lead back up to 10 games with 41 to play. Granted that it ain't over till its over, but the Knights would probably have to go 31-10 at worst to catch up. The only real suspense, at this point, revolves around which players will get called up or traded, and whether the Bulls can repeat as International League champions.

Some details of the Bulls' league-leading 11th shutout of the season after the jump.