HobbsDailyReport.com
CHARLESTON, S.C. – The Baseball Gods keep smiling favorably on the Hickory Crawdads.
Charleston (S.C.) scored twice in the eighth inning on Tuesday night in a South Atlantic League (SAL) series opener to beat visiting Hickory 4-3, but the Crawdads are still in first place in the Northern Division.
REMAINING GAMES
Wednesday, 7:05 p.m.: at Charleston, S.C.
Thursday, 6:35 p.m.: at Charleston, S.C.
Friday, 7 p.m.: Greensboro
Saturday, 7 p.m.: Greensboro
Sunday, 5 p.m.: Greensboro
Monday, 1 p.m.: Greensboro
With Kannapolis nipping Greensboro 4-0 and West Virginia’s game at Lakewood (N.J.) rained out on Tuesday, Hickory is still atop of the standings with six games to go.
The Crawdads (63-71, 36-28 second half) go into Wednesday night’s 7:05 p.m. game in Charleston (S.C.) one game up on Greensboro (34-28) and 1 ½ games ahead of West Virginia (34-29).
The RiverDogs (73-60, 39-24) have a 4 ½ game lead over Greenville (S.C.) in the chase for a second-half Southern Division title.
Charleston strung together three hits in the eighth inning to beat Hickory on Tuesday after the Crawdads had taken a 3-2 lead on Andretty Cordero’s solo home run in the seventh inning, his fourth of the season.
Facing reliever C.D. Pelham, the RiverDogs got a double by Isiah Gilliam and a triple by Dermis Gracia to tie it at 3 and then got the game-winning run on a single by Oswaldo Carbera.
Charleston had 12 hits with Devlyn Bolasky, Gilliam, Garcia, Carbera and Don Thompson-Williams each getting two.
Hickory had seven hits, led by Alex Kowlaczyk with two. He had an RBI as did Leody Taveras for the Crawdads, who fell behind early.
Charleston scored twice in the second inning on singles by Edwardo Navadas and Thompson-Williams and led 2-0 until the third inning, when Hickory got a run via Tanner Gardner being hit by a pitch and on a run-scoring sacrifice fly by Taveras.
The Crawdads pulled even at 2 in the sixth inning when Anderson Tejeda walked, stole second and scored on a single by Kowalczyk.
David Sosebee came on in the ninth inning for the RiverDogs and gained his 13th save. He got a groundball out before Franklin Rollin singled and stole second base and then got a groundball out off Eric Jenkins’ bat and struck out Blaine Prescott swinging to end it.
A crowd of 4,762 watched as Garrett Mundell (1-4) picked up a win after throwing 1 1/3 innings for the RiverDogs.
Pelham (4-2) took the loss for Hickory, pitching an inning. He gave up three hits, two runs (both earned), walked none and struck out one.
After playing on Wednesday at Charleston and on Thursday at 6:35 p.m. there, the Crawdads return to L.P. Frans Stadium for a four-game series with Greensboro that closes the SAL regular season.
Games on Friday and Saturday start at 7 p.m., Sunday’s game is at 5 p.m. and the Monday finale is at 1 p.m.
If Hickory and Greensboro end up tied, the Grasshoppers gain the Northern Division title on winning percentage (they have two rained out games that will not be made up).
For Tuesday’s boxscore, click on the link below.
http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?gid=2017_08_29_hicafx_crdafx_1&t=g_box&did=milb&sid=t448