The Charlotte Knights beat the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp 16-1 on Thursday night at VyStar Ballpark. The win moved Charlotte ahead in the six-game series at 2-1 with three games left to play.
The Knights racked up 14 hits and used three multi-run innings to do most of the damage: a four-run first, a five-run fifth, and a six-run sixth. Charlotte already led 10-0 by the time Jacksonville pushed across its only run in the bottom of the fifth — Matthew Etzel triple, Jared Serna RBI double.
The First Inning
Braden Montgomery walked. One batter later, Jacob Gonzalez doubled him in. LaMonte Wade Jr. walked. Ryan Galanie doubled Gonzalez home. Caden Connor hit a grounder to third base, the throw missed, and Wade Jr. and Galanie both scored on the error. Four runs, 4-0 Charlotte, and Jacksonville had not yet registered much in the way of resistance.
Jacksonville starter Thomas White (L, 0-1) lasted two innings. He walked three, struck out three, and gave up four runs (two earned) before being pulled.
The Knights tacked on another in the third. Connor singled, advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt, and scored on a Mario Camilletti RBI single. 5-0.
The fifth was the inning that ended the game. Charlotte sent ten men to the plate. Dru Baker, Rikuu Nishida, and Montgomery each drove in runs. Five came across. The Knights led 10-0 at the halfway point, which is the kind of margin that turns a baseball game into a maintenance job.
The Sixth Inning Was Worse
In the bottom of the fifth, Jacksonville plated its only run on the Etzel-Serna sequence. 10-1.
Then Charlotte hit two more home runs. Both were three-run shots — Jacob Gonzalez's tenth of the season and Dru Baker's fourth. Six runs in the inning. 16-1.
Montgomery, in his third Triple-A appearance since being called up from Double-A Birmingham this week, finished 3-for-5 with two doubles. Baker drove in five — a career high.
The Pitching Held Up Its End
Duncan Davitt started for Charlotte and pitched four shutout innings. Chase Plymell, Jackson Kelley, and Zach Franklin handled the rest. Kelley got the win — two innings of relief, his first decision of the year.
This is one of those wins where the line score makes the bullpen look like it did the heavy lifting, when the bullpen was actually being asked to keep the lights on.
By the top of the sixth, Jacksonville had run through its pitching staff and brought in position player Cody Morrissette, who tossed the final four innings, struck out two, and gave up six runs on five hits. The Jacksonville release, with admirable understatement, called it the longest Jacksonville relief appearance of the season. It was. It was also the longest stretch of the night Jacksonville got to think about anything other than how 16 runs ended up on the board at their ballpark.
What Sixteen Runs Tells You
This was Charlotte's third win of the season by 15 or more runs. The Knights now lead the International League in run differential by a wide margin. The offense has been streaky, the rotation has been thin behind Hagen Smith — but on the nights this team scores, it scores in volume.
The Jacksonville series sits 2-1 Charlotte through three games. The Knights took the opener and gave the second one back on a walk-off that started life as a home run and ended life as something more procedural, and then took Thursday by fifteen. The week before, the Gwinnett homestand at Truist Field closed Sunday on a walk-off the other way.
Friday at VyStar Ballpark is Charlotte right-hander David Sandlin (0-0, 0.00) opposite Jacksonville's Bradley Blalock (1-2, 3.09). First pitch 7:05 p.m.