The best of the system advance with wins, with Tanner McDougal winning his second in a row
The system fought back strong after a winless Friday, with the three winning teams all getting back on the left-hand column with various degrees of domination.
Charlotte Knights 7, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp 2 (Statcast box)
Nearly every hitter who stars with Charlotte is a familiar face, given two-thirds of the lineup has seen time in Chicago this year. So yeah, Tim Elko, Korey Lee and even Jacob Amaya have all taken star turns with the big club already this season.
A quick look at Tim Elko and Jacob Amaya’s Home Runs from tonight! pic.twitter.com/c88dWUNIK8
— Charlotte Knights (@KnightsBaseball) July 6, 2025
But starting pitcher Evan McKendry? OK, well, he’s a Brewers product so given that ridiculous 2025 pipeline down I-94 it’s almost as if we know him as well. But the righty really got the job done for the Knights tonight as they scraped back to .500 (43-43), with an efficient five-inning, 55-pitch effort. Well done, big fella.
Birmingham Barons 7, Chattanooga Lookouts 0
It was touch-and-go for a sec, as the Birmingham offense wasn’t doing too much in support of Tanner McDougal (six scoreless innings), but the ascendant starter star departed with a 2-1 lead and a five-spot from the visiting Barons iced the righty’s sixth win of the year. Just one extra-base hit in this one, and not an RBI XBH at that, so there was some clever station-to-station play and timely sac hits from the bats. The Barons improved to 43-37.
Hub City Spartanburgers 6, Winston-Salem Dash 1
The Dash (29-50) were lucky this one was played in “Hub City,” a location you’ll find on no map, because this effort was one for invisible ink. By that I mean it had all the markings of a traditional and customary Winston-Salem loss: meh pitching, offense so bad at executing it should be executed, shoddy defense, and the token run scored in the ninth to spoil a shutout and further ignominy. Next game, please.
Hickory Crawdads 10, Kannapolis Cannon Ballers 5
This type of weirdness you don’t usually see: a doubleheader within one, nine-inning game. The opener went 5 ½ innings and ended in a scoreless tie. The nightcap? Oof: Dads 10, Ballers 5. Or, put another way, if Hickory had only been allowed to bat in the sixth inning tonight, the two teams would have played into extras, at 5-5. Kannapolis (36-44) is seeing its godawful June stretch into July, and the likelihood of seeing any playoff action among the affiliates — much less the two-pack we got in 2024 with Kanny and Birmingham — is remote.
ACL White Sox 11, ACL Dodgers 7
With a loss on Friday, the Complex Sox (26-21) tumbled back out of first place, and it’s clear that the quick morning-game turnaround on Saturday was their mark in the sand: WE WILL NOT FALL FROM FIRST. To that end, the Complexers put a five-spot up in their first bats and never trailed in the game. However, the Dodgers (26-22) are a formidable opponent, and fought back by midgame to tie the contest up, 5-5.
What did the Sox do? Almost immediately after getting knotted, in the sixth inning, Chicago’s youngest put up ANOTHER five-spot. That’s BUFF. The club followed some of their usual tactics in clawing back into first: Running wild on the bases, just enough by way of heavy clouts, and relief pitching to the rescue. The polls will provide the individual accolades, but beyond a give-back start from Fabian Ysalla (5 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 3 K) it was a full-roster team effort.
Oh, wait, in a hi-larious postscript, Complex Sox skipper Danny Gonzalez was ejected from the game before the second inning, likely a result of protesting Leandro Alsinois being called out on strikes to end the five-run first.