Drive Stay Hot, Win 5th Straight Over Tourists, 11-3, Saturday Night

Efforts from starter Dylan Brown and the Greenville Drive’s red-hot offense led to an 11-3 win in game five against the Asheville Tourists. The Drive improves to 44-54, while the Tourists falls to 33-67. In the second-half standings, Greenville is now 18-17, while Asheville is 16-19.

Jake Schaffner wasted no time settling in as a new member of the Drive, scoring on the first run of the game in the first inning to make it 1-0. RBI hits from Nazzan Zanetello and Stanley Tucker extended the lead to three in the second. Owen Hull then singled in two more for an early 5-0 lead for Greenville, marking Hull’s first hit since joining the Drive over the weekend.

An Asheville error and a Luke Heyman double scored another pair of runs, giving the Drive a 6-0 advantage in the fourth. Asheville found its way on the board in the bottom half of the inning in a similar fashion, using a Greenville error and a Caden Powell double to make it 7-2.

Hull continued to pile on with another RBI single to drive in the eighth run of the night for the Drive in the sixth. Enddy Azocar contributed as well with his 11th homer of the season in the next inning to go up by seven runs against Asheville.

Greenville starter Brown wrapped up a standout performance, walking off the mound after 6.1 innings, where he allowed just two runs on three hits and struck out nine. Shea Sprague relieved him in the seventh, forcing two straight outs, including a swinging strikeout to end the frame.

Bringing up the Drive's bats quickly to load the bases in the eighth with three consecutive singles. Azocar took advantage with a base hit to force in Heyman to represent the tenth run of the night. Justin Gonzales kept the line moving with a sac-fly, 11-2, to end the inning.

Asheville put together a scare against Sprague with the bases juiced in the final two innings, but a long sac-fly from Freuddy Batista was all the Tourists could get, 11-3, after a double play ended the game to secure Greenville with the win.

The Drive’s offense remains relentless with 19 hits tonight and now 54 runs in the last five games of this series. New guys Hull and Schaffner made some noise in their first game. Huff went 2-for-5 with three RBIs and a walk, and Schaffner had a 2-for-3 game with three runs scored, an RBI, and two walks. Seven Drive batters had multihit games, but Zanetello got four, and Azocar collected three.

The Tourists only earned two runs, one coming from Powell, who went 2-for-4. The other came off the sac-fly from Batista in the ninth. They finished 8-for-21 in scoring position, stranding 16 on base tonight.

Brown earned his third win, with Asheville starter Parker Smith taking the loss after giving up five runs on eight hits.

The Greenville Drive wraps up this road trip in the series finale against the Asheville Tourists tomorrow with first pitch at 1:05 PM.