HobbsDailyReport.com
REQUENA
ASHEVILLE – A “thank you” card being sent by the Hickory Crawdads might be appropriate.
Asheville beat visiting Hickory 9-4 on Thursday night in South Atlantic League (SAL) baseball but the Crawdads – for the second straight night – still didn’t drop out of first place in the Northern Division.
Thanks to Charleston, W. Va., again winning over Hagerstown (Md.) on the road, 7-5, the Crawdads remain tied for first place with the Suns in the Northern Division.
Hickory is 12-9 in the second half standings (39-52 overall), and Hagerstown is 11-8 in the second half.
The Crawdads play the Tourists on Friday night at 7 p.m. then go to Greenville, S.C., for four games starting on Saturday night.
Asheville (42-47, 13-8) is second in the Southern Division behind Charleston and prevailed on Thursday night in a game witnessed by 2,692 that featured 25 hits.
The Tourists had 14 of those hits with five players – Manuel Melendez, Jose Gomez, Willie Abreu, Max George and Carlos Herrera – each collecting two. Jacob Bosiokovic hit his ninth home run of the season, a two-run shot, in the second inning for Asheville.
Anderson Tejeda, batting eighth in the order, led Hickory by going 3-for-4 with two doubles. No. 9 hitter Eric Jenkins hit a solo home run, his first of the season, in the first inning while Alex Kowalczyk and Charles Leblanc each had two hits.
Asheville had a 3-1 lead through three innings and stretched that to 4-1 through four innings and to 7-1 by the end of the fifth inning.
Melendez led off the Tourists fifth inning with a double and scored on a wild pitch by reliever Kaleb Fontenot, who also uncorked another wild pitch that scored a run. The third run of the inning scored on a groundball out by Tyler Nevin.
Hickory pulled within 7-4 with a three-run sixth inning highlighted by RBIs by Tanner Gardner (double), Ricardo Valencia (groundout) and Tejeda (double).
Alejandro Reguena (7-3) got the win as a starter for Asheville, which used six pitchers. He went 5 1/3 innings, giving up four hits, two runs (both earned), walking one and striking out 10.
Hickory starter Reid Anderson (1-6) took the loss after going four innings and giving up 11 hits. Six of Asheville’s runs scored against him were earned and he walked one and struck out one.
Click on the link below for Thursday night’s boxscore.
http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?gid=2017_07_13_hicafx_ashafx_1&t=g_box&did=milb&sid=t448