Salem capitalized on two Winston-Salem errors in the first inning and held on for yet another slim victory, 3-2 over the Dash in the series finale at BB&T Ballpark on Tuesday night. The Sox won for the third consecutive day, the first time since May 5-7 that Salem has accomplished that feat.
Winston entered the game as the second-worst defense in the league, and their poor glovework became an immediate factor. Three batters into the game, the Dash committed two errors and had an unearned run cross the plate against them. Shannon Wilkerson reached on the first, and scored on the second, while Jorge Padron was the beneficiary of the second miscue, coming home on an RBI single by Dan Butler to put Salem up 2-0.
As had been the case the majority of the series, the Dash fought right back with a run in the last of the first. Jared Mitchell tripled off Chris Hernandez and scored on a groundout to halve the Winston deficit. The Sox got that run back in the fourth on Wilkerson’s double that scored the decisive third run.
From there on, both pitching staffs took control. The Dash bullpen retired 15 of the last 18, including the last nine Salem batters. On the other side, Hernandez worked in and out of jams in multiple frames, most notably in the fifth. The first two runners reached against the southpaw, but Hernandez struck out the next two and forced a fly out to leave the inning unscathed. He earned his seventh victory of the season by going five frames, allowing a run on three hits while striking out four.
Michael Gleason gave up a run in the sixth on a double to Luis Sierra, but got Jason Bour to pop out to strand the tying run at second base. Winston-Salem got the tying run to second again in the seventh, but Ian Gac flew out to right to end the threat.
Will Latimer induced a double play to escape a jam in the eighth and Jeremiah Bayer picked up his third save of the season by tossing a 1-2-3 ninth.
Wilkerson and Butler paced the Sox offense with two hits and an RBI apiece. Butler drove in his 56th RBI of the season, tying Winston’s Gac for the Carolina League lead.
Despite the lack of offensive fireworks, as had been the case in the first three games of the series, the game still had its quirky moments. In the top of the sixth, Wilkerson singled up the middle, and the ball got under center fielder Jared Mitchell’s glove. Wilkerson hustled to third on the play, and David Mailman appeared to score Salem’s fourth run. However, Winston appealed that Mailman missed third base and home plate umpire Thomas Newsom called Mailman out, ending the inning and taking a run off the board. As a result, Salem manager Bruce Crabbe got into a heated argument with Newsom and was ejected from the game.
But that was not all. As the top of the ninth was set to commence, the light banks down the lines and behind home plate went out, followed a couple seconds later by the stanchions in the outfield going dark. The darkness created a 20-minute delay before the lights were restored to full power and play resumed.
After completing a 5-2 road trip and winning back-to-back series for the first time since late April, the Sox return to the Roanoke Valley on Wednesday night for the first of three against the Wilmington Blue Rocks. Ryan Pressly gets the call for Salem against Wilmington’s Justin Marks. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 PM.
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Chris Graham
