Hammond Becomes Fourth Firefly to Notch 5-Hit Game
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Josh Hammond continues to stun in his first professional season. The infielder became the fourth Fireflies player to notch five hits in a single game in a 9-2 win over the Charleston RiverDogs Saturday night at The Joe. He was the first Fireflies player to have a
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Josh Hammond continues to stun in his first professional season. The infielder became the fourth Fireflies player to notch five hits in a single game in a 9-2 win over the Charleston RiverDogs Saturday night at The Joe. He was the first Fireflies player to have a five-hit game since David Miranda accomplished the feat August 17, 2018 at Delmarva.
Hammond doubled in the first and seventh innings and singled in the fourth, sixth and eighth innings to accomplish the feat. He is 8-9 across the first two games of the series. Dan Rizzie accomplished the feat July 19, 2017 at Lexington and Enmanuel Zabala was the first Fireflies player to have five hits in a game when he did so August 22, 2016 vs Augusta.
Columbia pushed ahead with a fourth inning homer for the second-consecutive night. Tonight, it was Yandel Ricardo who mashed his sixth homer of the season to right field to score Josh Hammond to grant Columbia a 2-1 lead.
Darwin Rodriguez (W, 5-5) worked a quality start off 71 pitches. The southpaw spun six two-hit innings with five strikeouts while allowing a single run before he passed the ball to the bullpen. Jhon Reyes worked an inning and allowed a run, then Randy Ramnarace spun a scoreless eighth and Hunter Alberini closed the game out without allowing a run in the ninth inning for Columbia.
Alex Wallace (L, 1-6) was on the hook for the loss despite giving up just a pair of runs over five innings. After that, Columbia beat up on Ethan Storm, who gave up five runs in 2.2 innings before Jayden Voelker and Dylan Lesko closed out the contest.
The Fireflies’ big inning came in the sixth. Columbia sent nine to the plate and scored three runs—a pair off walks. Columbia took advantage of three infield singles and Sean Gamble knocked a single to score the Fireflies first run of the inning to break through and bring a 5-1 lead to the bottom of the sixth.
Columbia duplicated the feat in the top of the eighth inning. Yandel Ricardo and Sean Gamble drew bases loaded walks to increase the lead to 7-1. Then in the ninth, Connor Rasmussen launched his first homer of the season to left field to score Stone Russell and close out the scoring for Columbia.
Charleston was able to crack the score column first in the home half of inning one. Brendan Summerhill was hit by a pitch, then moved up to second on a line drive single up the middle from Alberth Palma. Later, Brady Marget legged out an infield single that allowed Summerhill to score from second to secure a 1-0 lead for the RiverDogs.
The RiverDogs got their final run in the eighth inning. Jose Monzone doubled and moved to third on a a throwing error to lead-off the inning before Brendan Summerhill singled him home to cut Columbia’s advantage to 7-2.
The Fireflies close out their series with the Charleston RiverDogs tomorrow night at the Joe at 5:05 pm. RHP Michael Lombardi (2-3, 2.78 ERA) gets the nod for Columbia and Charleston counters with RHP Aidan Haugh (8-4, 5.11 ERA).
Columbia returns home July 21-26 to play the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers at Segra Park. The club will host their first-ever True Crime Mystery Night Thursday, July 23, giveaway an ugly Christmas Sweater Jersey to the first 1,000 in attendance July 24 and host Dino Night presented by SC Department of Environmental Services July 25. Buy your tickets now at FirefliesTickets.com.