A return to Fluor Field was exactly what the Greenville Drive needed to cure their recent ills, as the offense put up 15 hits in Wednesday’s series opener over the Augusta GreenJackets.
A pair of Drive (12-13) errors in the top of the first put the team in an early 1-0 hole, but they quickly responded in the bottom half. After a leadoff double by Luis Alejandro Basabe, Mitchell Gunsolus cracked a two-run homer to right field off Phil Bickford (1-3) to put the Drive ahead 2-1.
Three more hits in the second made the score 3-1, as Austin Rei led off with a double and later scored on Jeremy Rivera’s single through the right side. The hit pushed Rivera’s hitting streak to eight games, the longest streak by a Drive player in 2016.
Greenville starter Marc Brakeman (1-1) took advantage of those early runs and earned his first professional win on the mound. The right-hander worked five innings and allowed only one earned run on four hits and two walks with five strikeouts.
The GreenJackets (12-14) cut the lead to 3-2 in the fourth on a solo homer by Miguel Gomez, but that’s as close as they would get, as the Drive scored three times with two outs in the sixth to pull away. Joseph Monge singled and later came home on another single by Rivera. Basabe followed with a triple off the wall in center field for the second run, and Gunsolus singled home Basabe from there.
An RBI double by Jalen Miller in the seventh scored Augusta’s third run of the night, and they had runners on second and third with nobody out, but Jake Cosart snuffed out the rally by striking out the next three hitters to escape. Cosart punched out five Augusta hitters in two innings.
Bobby Poyner continued his dominance out of the bullpen by working two perfect innings to record his fourth save. He has now thrown 14 consecutive scoreless innings to begin the year.
Gunsolus powered the 15-hit night with three hits and three RBI. Monge added three hits of his own, while Basabe, Rei, Rivera and Kyri Washington all collected two hits in the game.
Game two of the three-game series begins at 7:05 PM on Thursday night. Right-hander Anderson Espinoza (1-2, 4.50) takes the ball for the Drive, and the GreenJackets will counter with right-hander Logan Webb (1-0, 2.79).
(Written by Cameron White, Greenville Drive.)