Fantastic pitching today, with Emilio Vargas and Emerson Talavera getting quality starts and timely homers by Carlos Pérez and Harvin Mendoza.
Charlotte’s pitching performance deserved the win, but it didn’t come to fruition. All the offense was scored in the first inning, by both teams. Yermín Mercedes drove in Jake Burger to take a 1-0 lead, but Kyle Kubat gave the lead away in the bottom half, allowing a two-run homer. That was it; Kubat and the bullpen did not allow a run for the rest of the game. That included 1 2⁄3 innings from Jace Fry, where he struck out two and didn’t allow a run. That also means the Knights offense did not score, but some guys still reached base. Jake Burger left with two hits, and Mikie Mahtook outdid him by one with a 3-for-4 day at the plate.
Birmingham pitchers were the stars of the show in the 3-0 shutout win; in particular, Emilio Vargas. He earned the quality start and lowered his ERA to 2.52. He struck out eight batters over six innings, and it was probably a good thing he did given his seven base runners allowed. Zach Muckenhirn went a couple of innings after Vargas and then Caleb Freeman, probably the top relief prospect in the farm system, shut it down for the second Double-A save of his career.
The offense obviously wasn’t the best, but it did well enough for a comfortable win. Carlos Pérez provided most of that offense with a two-run homer in the fifth inning.
Oh, and he hits dingers too ♀️ pic.twitter.com/olzJUMiUYd
— Birmingham Barons (@BhamBarons) September 8, 2021
Tyler Neslony and Jameson Fisher had two hits each, so they should be noted for their performance. In Neslony’s case, he is hitting .300 again after his 2-for-4 day.
Poor pitching didn’t doom the Dash because the offense was able to keep up — just barely. Thanks to a three-run ninth inning, the Dash walked off a 9-8 victory. The game was led by the offense, let’s start right there: It had 14 hits, and five of them were for extra bases. Harvin Mendoza led the day with three hits, one of which was a homer. Gunnar Troutwine reached base three times as well, but it was on two singles and a walk.
The pitching struggled a lot, as Ty Madrigal was the only arm to not allow a run. Dan Metzdorf had the the start and really only struggled one inning, but it was a four-run second so it created a big deficit to climb out of. McKinley Moore struggled as well when he tried to close out the game, allowing two runs in the ninth to blow the save.
A no-good, very bad game in Kannapolis started out fine, but ended as bad as possible. Kevin Folman and Kohl Simas went three innings each to take the Cannon Ballers through six, and did not allow a run on just two hits. They were able to keep a 1-0 lead that Shawn Goosenberg produced with his first homer in Low-A. It all unraveled in the the seventh inning, when the short relief entered. The bullpen allowed seven runs that inning, and a couple more in the final two innings. The Cannon Ballers pitching staff needed to be close to perfect with the lack of offense to get the win, and it fell apart.
After being down 3-0, the ACL White Sox came back to tie the game. But the bullpen faltered late, for the loss. Homer Cruz and Brandon Jenkins combined to allow the first three runs. A Colson Montgomery error played a role in one of Cruz’s runs, and Jenkins did very well except for one pitch taken out for a solo homer. Other than that, Jenkins struck out five of the other six batters he faced.
The Sox got the first and second runs of the game with some help from the other team. Jefferson Mendoza scored on an error, and then Montgomery walked in a run. Mendoza did it all for the third run, though, with his fifth homer of the season tying the game 3-3. Unfortunately, that was the high point of the game. Erick Bello would allow three runs in the seventh inning and the Sox only got one back.
A close win, with the DSL White Sox starting pitcher actually going deep into a game. Emerson Talavera had a quality start today, with six innings pitched and just three runs allowed. Even more impressive than that was zero walks. Daniel González came in for the save and went 1-2-3 for his second of the year.
The offense, meanwhile, didn’t do much with their opportunities, but the White Sox won anyway. Every single batter in the lineup reached base once — and only once. Today was a day where you couldn’t do that much better than your teammate, as everyone either reached with a walk or a single. Where there was some deviation was with the wheels activating when some Sox got on base: Carlos Jiménez had a stolen base, as well as Godwin Bennett, and then Layant Tapia added his 13th of the year.