Responding In Style; Tourists Blank Crawdads 7-0

HICKORY, NC--One night after the Hickory Crawdads handed the Asheville Tourists a 7-0 series opening loss, the Tourists answered with a 7-0 shutout win of their own. In a game that was called due to rain in the ninth inning, Asheville plated seven runs and limited Hickory to just three hits, all singles. With the win, the Tourists knotted up the series at one game apiece.

Zach Jemiola ran his record on the season to 2-0 with another brilliant pitching performance. The Tourists starting pitcher breezed through six shutout innings. Hickory was only able to muster two hits off Jemiola; a single in the second and a single in the sixth. In the bottom of the fourth Jemiola struck out the side.

Hickory's Kelvin Vazquez pitched five shutout innings to begin the game, but the Tourists rallied off Crawdads reliever Adam Parks in the seventh. With one out, Henry Garcia drew a walk and that was followed by back-to-back singles by Randy Reyes and Sean Dwyer. Asheville's second-baseman Forrest Wall stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and with one swing of the bat Wall put the Tourists in front 4-0. The Grand Slam by Wall was his first Home Run of the season.

The Tourists tacked on three more in the top of the ninth. Robbie Perkins hit a sacrifice fly to plate Garcia while later in the inning Luis Jean added an RBI single. As the rain began to fall, the umpires called for the tarp with two outs in the top of the ninth. The field was deemed unplayable to complete the ninth inning thus giving the Tourists a convincing win and their first shutout of the season.

Jerad McCrummen tossed two innings in relief of Jemiola and struck out three. Dwyer finished with two hits while Wall, Garcia, and Reyes each scored two runs. The series rubber match begins at 11:00am Wednesday morning.