The Greenville Drive and Charleston RiverDogs closed out the latest series of the Battle of the Palmetto State presented by Spinx with a doubleheader on Monday night at Fluor Field.
After dropping game one 4-1, the Drive rebounded in the nightcap with a 4-2 victory.
The difference in game two was Carlos Mesa’s two-run homer in the bottom of the third against Matt Marsh (1-2), which put the Drive (3-2, 41-34) ahead for good. The homer was Mesa’s sixth of the season.
After Mesa’s homer, Greenville’s Jake Drehoff and Jamie Callahan kept the RiverDogs off the board the rest of the way, with Drehoff striking out five in four and one-third innings and Callahan notching his first win of the year with two and two-third hitless frames of relief.
The Drive jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first of game two. Yoan Moncada reached on an error, moved to third on a Michael Chavis double off the Green Monster and came home on Danny Bethea’s RBI groundout. Javier Guerra came through with an RBI single later in the inning for the second run.
Charleston answered with a pair of runs in the second after an RBI double by Ryan Lindemuth and a Greenville error.
Bethea had two hits for the Drive in the second game, while Alexander Palma collected a pair of hits for the RiverDogs.
In the opener, Charleston never trailed, taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the second on Palma’s sacrifice fly and Collin Slaybaugh’s RBI single.
Dedgar Jimenez (5-4) took the loss despite hurling the Drive’s first complete game of the 2015 season, as he allowed just one earned run over the seven-inning game.
Moncada had two hits in the opener for Greenville and scored their lone run of the game. Mike Meyers added a pair of hits, and Slaybaugh and Vicente Conde picked up two hits for Charleston.
From here, the Drive hit the road to begin a four-game series against the Hickory Crawdads, affiliate of the Texas Rangers. First pitch for Tuesday’s series opener is at 7:00 PM. RH Jeffry Fernandez (2-5, 5.09) starts for the Drive, while the Crawdads will send RH Austin Pettibone (0-1, 4.50) to the mound.
(Article written by Zack Bennett of the Greenville Drive.)
(Photo credit: Gwinn Davis via Greenville Drive.)