Cooper Ingle had quite the day for the Columbus Clippers Thursday. He hit three home runs and a double that was three feet from being another. That provided the oomph to push the Clippers past the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders 7-5 at Huntington Park. Here are our three takeaways from Thursday’s afternoon game:

1.    So left-handed hitting catcher Cooper Ingle went deep three times and drove in four runs for Columbus in the Clippers lead-off spot. On the other side of the diamond, RailRiders lead-off man, and left-handed hitting catcher, Austin Wells, cracked two long balls and had three RBIs. That has to be some kind of record, but at last check the statistics computers were still parsing the code.

2.   Reliever Trevor Stephan continues his comeback. The 30-year-old missed all of 2024 and half of 2025 after having Tommy John surgery. In the three seasons before that, he appeared in 180 games for Cleveland with a 3.73 ERA in almost 200 innings pitched. He split time last season among three levels in the Guardians’ system and it proved to be challenging. He’s been at the Arizona facilities this season until Thursday when he joined the Clippers. He went an inning and gave up a run on a hit and a walk. His fastball was in the mid-90s and he spotted a slider and a splitter. He looked in control. It’s a process.

3.   Franco Aleman took the hill in the ninth inning for the Clippers and faced the minimum number of hitters to earn his team-leading seventh save. His four-seamer was consistently clocked at 96 and 97. In 23.0 innings pitched for Columbus, he has an ERA of 0.39 with 33 strikeouts and only seven walks. He was called up earlier this season by the Guardians where he worked in two games. Another I-71 trip can’t be far behind.