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Luke Voit made his return to the RailRiders lineup. But it wasn’t the Yankees slugger who did the damage on Friday night. Not top hitter Ryan McBroom, either.

Just about everyone else who started for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre brought the lumber in an 11-4 win at Lehigh Valley in the opener of a weekend series.

And that’s a very encouraging sign for the first-place RailRiders (70-60), who have emphatically broken out of the August slump that threatened to derail their season.

Friday’s win gave them five in six games this week after opening the month on an alarming 3-12 slide. The impressive streak comes at a critical time, as second-place Syracuse won its ninth straight on Friday. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre maintains a 1.5-game lead over the Mets atop the IL North with just 10 games left in the regular season.

Mandy Alvarez grinded out three RBI and Breyvic Valera drove in three himself thanks a third-inning homer that erased a poor start for the visitors.

Voit, McBroom and veteran catcher Erik Kratz were the only players who didn’t record a hit on the night. Voit, who had been working out with the team earlier in the week, made the first start of his rehab stint while dealing with a sports hernia.

Leading off and playing first base, Voit went 0-for-3 with a walk and a run scored while striking out once. He left four runners stranded. He originally came over in a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals last summer, playing in nine games for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre before getting the call-up to New York, where his power numbers surged.

On Friday, Voit exited in the middle of the seventh, replaced in the lineup by Wendell Rijo.

Three straight hits with two outs immediately put the RailRiders in a hole in the bottom of the first. Andrew Romine’s double was followed by back-to-back homers from Deivy Grullon and Nick Hundley for a 3-0 IronPigs lead.

Held without a hit in the first two frames, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre struck back in the top of the third. Alvarez singled while Billy Burns and Voit drew consecutive walks to load the bases.

McBroom followed with a sacrifice fly and Valera then launched the first pitch he saw over the fence in right-center to abruptly give Scranton/Wilkes-Barre a 4-3 lead.

It expanded to 5-3 in the fourth, but it looked like it could have been more after leading off with a Trey Amburgey single and a Gosuke Katoh double. Amburgey scored on a fielder’s choice groundout by Alvarez, but Katoh was thrown out at third and Lehigh Valley didn’t allow another run to come home.

Still, Rosa kept putting up zeroes after his shaky first, and Alvarez drove in another run in the sixth with an RBI single following Amburgey’s 29th double of the season.

Rosa exited after five innings, giving up three earned runs on five innings while striking out five to pick up the win.

Alvarez added some more insurance in the seventh after Katoh drew a bases-loaded walk. Alvarez picked up his third RBI of the night — and 17th so far this month — with a sac fly that made it 8-3.

When the IronPigs got one back in the bottom of the seventh, the RailRiders answered with three in the eighth thanks to an RBI double by Rijo — who later scored on a wild pitch — and a run-scoring single from Clint Frazier.

The series continues at 6:35 p.m. Saturday in Allentown.

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By Derek Levarse

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