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SOUTH BEND, IN – The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers battled the South Bend Cubs, the weather, and themselves on Tuesday night at Four Winds Field. Wisconsin took a 6-0 lead after a 28-minute delay before the start of the game and watched it evaporate in one inning. Eduardo Garcia saved the day with a two-out RBI single in the sixth inning just before a band of rain moved through the area to end the game – after a much longer delay – in the top of the seventh to give the Rattlers a 7-6 victory.

Boxscore

Scoring Plays

The Timber Rattlers (17-23) grabbed a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. walked and stole second with one out. Blake Burke punched a single through the left side of the infield to put runners on the corners. Marco Dinges, the fourth round pick of the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2024 draft, stepped to the plate for his first appearance with the Rattlers and drove in Garcia with a sacrifice fly to center.

Hedbert Pérez hit a lead-off home run to right in the top of the second to give the Rattlers a 2-0 lead. Pérez led the Rattlers in homers with five after that home run.

HEDBERT HOMER DOUBLES OUR LEAD‼️ pic.twitter.com/1L9cDGx10a

— Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (@TimberRattlers) May 20, 2025

Wisconsin got some big two-out hits in the top of the fourth inning to put their advantage. Jadher Areinamo drove in the first run of the frame with a bad hop single over the shoulder of the third baseman. Garcia was next and he launched a three-run homer to left for a 6-0 lead. Garcia’s home run tied him with Pérez for the team lead in that category.

3-RUN HOMER FROM EDUARDO GARCIAAAAA???? pic.twitter.com/09M6dlldif

— Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (@TimberRattlers) May 20, 2025

Patricio Aquino was the starting pitcher for the Timber Rattlers. He pitched three scoreless innings despite three walks and a hit batsman. Aquino helped himself by not allowing a hit and striking out four, including Andy Garriola with the bases loaded to end the third inning.

Dikember Sánchez was first up out of the Wisconsin bullpen and walked the lead-off batter in the bottom of the fourth but stranded that runner at third. He was not as fortunate in the fifth.

Sánchez walked the first two batters he faced in the fifth. That was followed by an RBI, bloop single by Cristian Hernandez. Another walk loaded the bases for Garriola again. This time, Garriola hit a 2-2 pitch from Sánchez to the seats in left for a grand slam and Wisconsin’s lead was down to one run.

Yerlin Rodriguez was called into the game to relieve Sánchez. He gave up a single to the first batter he faced. A wild pitch moved that runner to second base. Rodriguez retired the next two batters. Then, Brian Kalmer singled to left to drive in the tying run for South Bend (10-30).

Joe Nahas, South Bend’s second pitcher who had worked a scoreless fifth inning, retired the first batter he faced in the top of the sixth before the Cubs went back to the bullpen to bring Vince Reilly into the game.

Daniel Guilarte had walked his first two times up in the game. He made it three when Reilly missed on a 3-1 pitch. Guilarte stole second but was still there with two outs. Garcia delivered again for the Rattlers with a single to left on a 2-2 pitch to drive in Guilarte to put the Rattlers back in front.

Rodriguez was all business in the bottom of the sixth when he struck out the side in order.

Reilly went back out for the top of the seventh and threw one pitch for a ball to Dinges before the rain got too heavy to continue the game. The tarp went on the field to start the delay. The tarp would eventually be taken off the infield, but field conditions prevented the game from being restarted. The game was made official after a ninety minute delay.

Eduardo Garcia went 2-for-3 with two runs, four RBI, and two stolen bases on the evening.

Game two of the series is scheduled for Wednesday morning at Four Winds Field. Anthony Flores (0-2, 5.40) is the scheduled starting pitcher for the Timber Rattlers. Evan Aschenbeck (0-1, 4.82) is set to start for the Cubs. Game time is 10:05am CDT. The radio broadcast on AM1280, WNAM and internet audio starts with the pregame show at 9:45am.

For Bend’s real estate developers, the biggest hurdle to breaking ground is sometimes the city itself.

Their project plans must churn through a gauntlet of reviews by planners, engineers and other staff with heavy workloads that make sure developments jive with ever-changing codes and expectations of the city. Even a small miscommunication can delay a project for weeks.

But at the request of developers, the city has granted a potential remedy: a staff member to help guide large projects from start to finish, helping them move through the city’s process more efficiently.

It could result in more housing on the ground faster — something the city wants and needs badly.

“I just want somebody on the inside, on the city’s team, who is able to form a good relationship with a developer, be able to understand what their timing needs are, what their financial pressure points are,” said Colin Stephens, Community Development Director with the city of Bend.

“It’s a partnership getting a project all the way from concept to occupancy,” he added.

Applications for the new position, called the city’s “development navigator,” closed recently after more than two-dozen people applied.

Until late last year, the city had a staff person assigned to guide large developments inside an urban renewal district at the center of the city. When that person left, the role was revamped to help development across the city. It’s the latest tool from the city of Bend in an effort to speed up housing production as prices reach record highs. Streamlining the city’s permitting process was a key theme in city council campaigns in 2024. Some developers have complained that the city’s process is partially to blame for holding back affordable housing.

Getting development plans approved can be redundant, said Jesse Russell, CEO of Hiatus Homes, a local builder specializing in small, dense homes on infill lots. Sometimes, developers address an initial round of notes and revisions from city planners, only to have the same issues arise when a staffer from another department sees the plans.

And when city staff turnover, shift roles or reorganize departments, it can cause more confusion and delays. Developers need to know when they might get the go-ahead to build so they can line up a contractor in advance and break ground right away, Russell said.

He’s looking forward to having the new city employee on board.

“I think it will make it more efficient to have just one point of communication,” Russell said.

Hiatus Homes’ small infill projects are the type of housing the city of Bend and the state want to encourage. But they also require a higher level of attention from city planners because they’re often taking advantage of constant development code changes.

The Oregon legislature passed HB 2001 in 2019, and with subsequent amendments has opened the door for building multifamily units — like duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes — across cities. Different types of housing trigger different requirements for improvements developers must make to nearby streets or other infrastructure — and that’s not always clear either, said Sean McKeever, design director with Hiatus.

Development liaisons are employed by several other cities across Oregon, said Deb Flagan, vice president of community engagement with Hayden Homes, a large regional builder based in Central Oregon. When the position is set up to be focused on speeding up housing production, it usually results in people moving into their new homes faster, Flagan said.

“It is our hope that this role supports housing development in Bend and work as a problem solver when you need questions answered quickly and or help to get the questions to the right person,” Flagan said in an email.

Large commercial projects might also see benefits, said Jeremy McPherson, general manager with Taylor Brooks, a partnership between two longtime development companies in Central Oregon, Taylor Development and Brooks Resources. The company is developing eight acres of land in Juniper Ridge of northeast Bend, which is slated for industrial development, starting with a 47,000-square-foot campus for a biopharmaceutical company.

Planning is underway for the surrounding projects across four different parcels. McPherson said he requested consistency in city personnel assigned to the projects to keep plans moving forward.

“In a vacuum, if you’re just submitting all those individual applications, you could get any personnel. You’re left trying to explain all of those stories all over again, and revisit what you had worked out with one other reviewer, and then that reviewer needs to get on the same page with the prior one,” McPherson said.

A recent paper published in Nature Materials notes that warm rolling, the same core process that turns aluminum ingots into beverage-can stock, can strengthen silver and copper chalcogenides. It notes, for instance, that “narrow-gap semiconductor Ag2Se can be plastically manufactured by warm metalworking.” Yield and tensile strengths climb significantly in Ag₂Se, Cu₂Se, AgCuSe and AgCuS when the compounds are rolled in their plastic temperature windows. Yet the improved mechanical profile comes with almost no penalty to electronic output. Room-temperature electrical power factors of warm-rolled Ag₂Se, Mg₃Bi₁.₅Sb₀.₄₉Te₀.₀₁ and Cu₂Se films stay within 10% of their bulk counterparts.”

Classic metallurgy teaches that strengthening often lowers carrier mobility by generating electron-scattering defects. Yet, this new warm rolling technique appears to largely overcome this common trade-off. Electrons move through these specially prepared materials with relative ease, with some achieving carrier mobilities up to four times that of silicon (and, as the paper notes, it is “~1–3 orders of magnitude higher than that of most two-dimensional materials”). Additionally, these high-performing crystals can now be shaped into long, thin ribbons.

A 90-centimeter ribbon

The poster child for the new approach is silver selenide. The researchers at Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University began with a small, polycrystalline Ag₂Se slab, warmed it to roughly 420 K, and sent it through a rolling mill. Multiple passes transformed the nugget into a 90-centimeter strip, roughly 3,000 percent elongation, without cracking. In conventional thermoelectric ceramics, which often chip under minor handling.

That success rests on basic thermodynamics. Ag₂Se undergoes a brittle-to-ductile transition at 363 ± 20 K, a sweet spot high enough to activate dislocation motion yet low enough to retain the desired orthorhombic phase. Rolling above that threshold lets grains slide and rotate instead of fracture. Warm compression studies reveal dense networks of shear bands decorated by twisted, rotated and distorted lattice segments. Those defects serve as local soft zones that blunt cracks and, counterintuitively, toughen the material.

Silver selenide is not an outlier. Room-temperature-brittle Cu₂Se, Bi₉₀Sb₁₀ and other alloys also exhibit high plasticity when deformed below about 200 °C. The high temperature needed for plastic flow is still well below the melting points of the compounds, so conventional lab hot plates or even industrial ovens provide adequate heating. That accessibility fosters visions of roll-to-roll production lines rather than one-pellet-at-a-time hot-presses.

Industrial echoes

The convergence of high strength, big strain tolerance and robust electronic output will sound familiar to metallurgists who once shepherded aluminum from lab curiosity to everyday commodity. Warm rolling offers a similar bridge for inorganic semiconductors. Because the temperature windows sit in the hundreds, not thousands, of kelvins, existing aluminum or copper lines could, in principle, be retooled with only modest modifications, perhaps watt heaters in place of kilowatt furnaces.

Scale-up economics still matter. Silver, selenium and tellurium are not as abundant as iron or carbon, but thermoelectric modules require only thin strips: a 90-centimeter ribbon a few microns thick carries less than a gram of material. High recovery rates via recycling could further soften raw-material constraints.

Still, warm metalworking is no cure-all. Long-term stability under cyclic thermal loads, resistance to oxidation, and interface reliability in full modules remain open questions. Some of those issues may yield to the same defect engineering that unlocked ductility. Others may require barrier layers or novel encapsulation strategies, which the rolling process could deliver locally through clad or laminated architectures.

Looking ahead

The package deal of improved mechanical properties, maintained electronic/thermoelectric properties, and demonstrated potential in actual devices could push thermoelectrics past a commercial tipping point. Flexible ribbons sidestep mechanical fragility, unlock continuous production and conform to curved surfaces where temperature differences thrive. Add in predictive design tools that nail transition temperatures within about 30 K, and the odds of rapidly expanding the materials palette look good.

The next generation of waste-heat harvesters may well arise not from a furnace but from a rolling mill, one that has learned a few semiconductor tricks along the way.