On NASCAR night at L.P. Frans Stadium, the Hickory Crawdads opened the final four-game series of the first half going bumper-to-bumper in a three-team race for the Northern Division title in the first half. It appears that the race will come down to the wire as Hickory kicked off the final stretch with a 5-1 win over the Charleston (S.C.) RiverDogs in front of 3,113 fans.
With three games remaining, Hickory (38-27) is in a virtual tie with Greensboro (39-28) for first place, leading the Grasshoppers by .003 percentage points. Greensboro blanked Kannapolis 4-0 to keep pace with the Crawdads.
The third team in the race, the Hagerstown Suns (37-30), lost twice to Delmarva to fall two games out. Their elimination number stands at two—any combination of two losses by the Suns’ or two wins by Hickory or Greensboro.
All the runs Hickory needed came in the third on three unearned runs with the aid of a pair of throwing errors by third baseman Rob Segedin.
Jurickson Profar reached second on Segedin’s first error, as his throw was wide of first. With Odubel Herrera at bat, Profar stole third. Herrera then struck out and on the play Charleston’s catcher Gary Sanchez picked off Profar at third. However, in the run down, Segedin’s throw back to Sanchez was wide allowing Profar to score.
After Tomas Telis singled and Christian Villanueva was hit by a pitch, Andrew Clark knocked in both runners with a double off RiverDogs’ starter Nic Turley (3-6).
Starting pitcher Luke Jackson (2-1) was brilliant through the first four innings as he struck out nine of the first 12 hitters and 10 overall in the game.
Sanchez finally dented the scoreboard for the RiverDogs in the fifth with a towering homer to left to lead off the fifth.
Jackson appeared to settle down striking out Mike Ferraro. Kelvin De Leon reached on a single, but Jackson induced a grounder by Jeff Farnham for the second out.
Control issues then crept in for Jackson as he walked the bases loaded. With a reliever warming up for Hickory, manager Bill Richardson made the decision to stay with the 19-year old hurler.
“I’ve got to give (Crawdads’ pitching coach) Storm Davis a lot of credit for having confidence in his pitcher,” said Richardson. “I asked him there and he said let’s see what he’s got.”
Jackson rewarded the confidence of his pitching coach getting Ramon Flores to fly out to center.
“I was pretty pumped about that,” said Jackson in appreciation of his coaches. “I was struggling and they stuck with me and I was able to get out of it with the help of my defense.”
Hickory added a single run in the sixth, as Josh Richmond tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly by Jake Skole, and tacked on one more in the seventh with Villanueva bringing home Odubel Herrera, who had doubled.
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