The Charlotte Knights and the Norfolk Tides played six times at Truist Field between Tuesday and Sunday and ended the week even. Each team won three. The Tides took the first half and the Knights took the second.
Sunday's finale settled what shape the series would carry into the schedule. Charlotte won 15-3. Jacob Gonzalez went 4-for-5 with a home run, two doubles, and four runs batted in. Oliver Dunn and Dustin Harris also homered, though both of those came after Norfolk turned to a position player on the mound. Duncan Davitt — five innings, two runs — picked up his first win of the season. The twelve-run margin was the fifth time this year the Knights have won a game by double digits — the season started with one.
That score sent the homestand out on the right note. The first half of the week had been a different story.
Tuesday, Wednesday: Two losses
The series opened with Kyle Teel's first rehab game for the Knights. Teel homered in the second inning. The Knights drew ten walks as a team, a season high, with LaMonte Wade Jr. accounting for four of them by himself. Charlotte led 6-3 after two. The Tides scored four in the top of the third, added one in the fourth, and held on. Both bullpens settled in; neither offense scored again. Norfolk 9, Charlotte 6.
Wednesday was harder to take. Four Knights went deep — Braden Montgomery in the third for his first Triple-A home run, then Dru Baker, Jacob Gonzalez, and Oliver Dunn in the seventh. Korey Lee hit two triples, the first multi-triple game of his professional career. The Knights collected thirteen hits and eight runs. They still lost. Ryan Noda — a former Knight himself — homered twice for Norfolk, including the game-winner in the top of the ninth. Tides 9, Knights 8.
Through two games the Knights had thirteen runs and five home runs and zero wins.
Thursday, Friday: The same score, two ways
The Knights won the next two games by the same final and got there in essentially the same fashion. Both nights, Charlotte put up four runs early. Both nights, Norfolk could only manage one run back. Final on Thursday: 4-1. Final on Friday: 4-1.
Thursday's lone Tides run came in the eighth inning, when Norfolk loaded the bases with no outs and got exactly one run home on a double-play groundout. Payton Eeles went 2-for-2 with two walks for the Tides, and Trey Gibson took the loss after going four innings and allowing one run on four hits.
Friday's four runs came in a single inning. Michael Turner and LaMonte Wade Jr. went back-to-back for the home runs that broke the bottom of the third open. Norfolk's lone run came on a Johnathan Rodríguez sacrifice fly in the third, set up by rehab singles from Baltimore's Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad — both of whom had checked into the lineup on MLB rehab assignments. The Tides finished with four hits, three double-play balls, and ten runners stranded. The series was tied at two games apiece.
Saturday: A barn burner that went the wrong way
Saturday was the kind of game that doesn't fit on a line score. Twenty-one runs. Twenty-seven hits. Ten home runs. Seven different Tides hit one. The Knights hit three of their own — Jacob Gonzalez and Braden Montgomery in the first three innings, then Gonzalez again with a grand slam over the right field wall in the seventh to tie the game 9-9.
The tie lasted until the ninth. Norfolk hit another solo home run to break it, then added an insurance run on a two-out RBI single. Oliver Dunn drove in a run for Charlotte in the bottom of the ninth. The Knights ran out of outs one run short. Tides 11, Knights 10.
All nine Charlotte starters had at least one hit. Seven of nine Norfolk position players hit a home run. It was that kind of night.
Sunday: Steamrolled
By the time the Knights came to the ballpark Sunday afternoon, the series was 3-2 in Norfolk's favor. The math required a win to split it. Charlotte got the win, and then some.
Gonzalez opened the scoring with a two-run blast in the first inning. Norfolk tied it in the third on a pair, and that was the only damage Davitt allowed in his five innings of work. Korey Lee's two-run single and a Dustin Harris RBI triple in the bottom of the third put the Knights ahead 5-2. Braden Montgomery, Dunn, and Gonzalez all added RBI hits in the sixth, and the game got out of hand fast after that. Norfolk eventually turned to a position player. Dunn and Harris both homered against him.
Garrett Schoenle, Adisyn Coffey, Jordan Leasure, and Ben Peoples took care of the final four frames out of the Charlotte bullpen.
The shape of the week
Six games. Three wins, three losses. Two losses to open, two wins in the middle, a one-run slugfest dropped Saturday, and a twelve-run win to close. The Tides leave Charlotte 18-27. The Knights move to 22-23 and head to Gwinnett for a six-game series that starts Tuesday evening.
Two of the week's headline names — Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad — were on MLB rehab assignments for the Tides. Kyle Teel was on rehab the other direction, in the Knights lineup. They each got onto the field and into the box scores; none of them decided the series. The series got decided by Jacob Gonzalez going 4-for-5 with four driven in on Sunday afternoon, and by the fact that everything the Knights had done over the previous six days was now a footnote.