The Charlotte Knights had lost the eighth inning twice in a row. Wednesday night at Truist Field, against Buffalo, they won one there instead, and it took a sacrifice fly and a bad throw to do it.
Here is the play. Rikuu Nishida led off the bottom of the eighth with an infield single, Charlotte down 4-3. Jake Cave doubled into right and Nishida went to third. Tim Elko lifted a fly ball to center, deep enough to score Nishida and tie it. Then the throw came home and got away, and Cave, who had been standing on second when the inning started, kept right on going. Two runs on one sacrifice fly. Knights 5-4.
That's not nothing. It is also a second straight win, which is worth saying out loud because of what came just before it. At Gwinnett on Saturday, Charlotte led 3-0 and gave up three in the eighth. On Sunday, a one-run lead went away on a two-out pinch-hit grand slam. Same inning, back to back. So when Buffalo hit a pair of home runs in the top of the eighth Wednesday to go ahead 4-3, everybody in the building knew the shape of it. This time the shape broke the other way.
The rest of the night was steady and unglamorous, which is how this team wins when it wins. Jonathan Cannon went six innings and gave up one solo home run. Cave got the lead back with a two-run shot in the fourth. Nishida singled home Dru Baker with two out in the fifth. Shane Smith worked the ninth without allowing a baserunner, his first save of the year.
Now, a word about the standings, because Triple-A does this differently and it is worth knowing what you are watching.
Charlotte sits 76-64, second in the International League East, eight games behind Rochester. That is a good season. It is also not the ledger that decides October. The International League splits its year into halves and sends two clubs to a best-of-three championship series: the best record in the first half, and the best record in the second. Memphis took the first-half spot back in June, when the Knights finished 42-33 and came up a few games short of it.
So the second half is the one still open, and it is its own table. Charlotte is 34-31 in it. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre leads at 37-26, Rochester is right there at 38-27, Indianapolis at 37-28. The Knights are four games off that pace with ten to play, which means they need a hot streak and some help, and there are ten games left to find both.
The club says Charlotte "continues to stay alive for the final International League playoff spot," and that is the correct word. Alive. This team has been better than alive before.
Ask Scranton. On August 19 the Knights were down 8-1 in the eighth inning and won that game in the tenth against the RailRiders, seven runs in two innings, and Scranton is the club now sitting on the spot Charlotte is chasing. If you are looking for a reason to keep watching, that is a pretty good one.
Ten games. Two more against Buffalo, a doubleheader Saturday, then six at Norfolk, and the regular season ends September 20. That is four more nights of baseball at Truist Field and nothing after that until spring.
Game three is tonight at 7:04. Friday is First Responders' Night: two thousand tickets going to first responders, an American flag stretched across the outfield before the anthem, a moment of silence for September 11, and the players in custom jerseys that go up for auction afterward to benefit the Steven Coakley Foundation.
Four home games. Go while there are some left.