John Parke pitched a great game and the Knights broke out of an offensive slump with five extra-base hits on the way to a 6-5 walk-off in the bottom of the ninth against the Norfolk Tides in Charlotte Saturday night.
Romy Gonzalez continued his torrid pace in Triple-A, with a double and two singles tonight. Gonzalez opened the ninth with a single, stole second (his second of the night) and advanced to third on a throwing error by the Tides’ catcher.
The next hitter, Marco Gonzalez, hit a pop-up pretty far down the third-base line that the Tides’ Tyler Nevin should have let drop for a foul ball. But he caught the ball, with his momentum taking him away from home plate, and had no chance to get Gonzalez, who tagged up with the game winner.
In 11 games with the Knights, Gonzalez is raking at a .400 clip.
Meanwhile, Parke tossed six innings, scattering five hits and three walks while striking out four. He had a lot of traffic on the bases, but was the beneficiary of four double plays, thanks to his ability to induce a lot of ground balls. He recorded nine ground outs, versus just one fly out.
It was an odd offensive game. The Knights didn’t have a hit till the bottom of the fifth, but their first one, a Gonzalez RBI double, tied the game at 1-1. An inning later, the Knights got their second hit, a Blake Rutherford solo home run, but the Tides stormed back in the top of the seventh with three walks and a hit batter to tie the game 2-2.
The Knights’ third hit again went for extra bases — a Danny Mendick double with one out in the bottom of the seventh. Gonzalez followed that with an single and stolen base, and then both he and Mendick came around to score on a Hernandez double. A Micker Adolfo single plated the third and final run of the inning. Hernandez had entered the game in the fourth when Jake Burger was hit on the foot and removed from the game, in obvious pain.
A Nate Nolan double in the botom of the eighth was the team’s fifth extra-base hit, to go along with three singles.
With a 5-2 lead, reliever Jace Fry pitched a 1-2-3 eighth, with two strikeouts, but the ninth turned out to be a disaster. Fry hit the first batter, gave up a double to the second, walked the third, and struck out the next before wild pitching home the first run of the inning. He gave up a two-run single before Bennett Sousa came on to put out the fire and set the stage for the Gonzalez heroics.
More John Parke
Parke’s dad grew up in Charlotte, and he has several friends and family members in the area who attend whenever he pitches. “It has been an absolute blast,” he said. “My parents haven’t missed a game yet. It is so much fun getting to pitch here.”
“I don’t strike out a lot guys,” he said. “I rely on my defense a lot. But when you have seven or eight big leaguers behind you, it is a lot easier to do my job. The confidence of that, yet alone who is behind the plate, having thrown to Yasmani this year, and Collins and now Seby, it has just been an unreal experience with those guys.”
Parke said he talked to Mike Wright upon his arrival to Charlotte, who reminded him that Triple-A and the major leagues use a different ball. “I noticed that the movement with the big-league ball is a heck of a lot more for me,” he said.
Parke throws five pitches but it is his sinking fastball and changeup that generates so many ground balls. “It is kind of a tunneling thing,” he explained. “They both go away from a righty and into a lefty, and there is about 12-14 mph difference, depending upon how I want to throw them. So if I can get them to tunnel well for as long as possible, and just get hitters on the front foot or too far back, that’s where they start rolling over like that. And if I throw that slider into a righty to get them off, that also creates some rollovers.”
Catching Up With Micker Adolfo
I had a chance on Friday to have one last conversation with Adolfo. There’s little to no chance he’ll be in a Knights’ uniform in 2022, though there’s a possibility he could be a member of the White Sox.
Adolfo is out of options so the White Sox either have to carry him on the 2022 major-league roster or release him. But Adolfo wouldn’t speculate on his future.
“I try not to think about that stuff,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything.”
In the off-season, Adolfo said, he’ll return home to the Dominican Republic for a month of winter baseball. He acknowledged that injuries have limited his at bats during his seven years with the White Sox, and knows he needs more work at the plate.
The soft-spoken, easygoing outfielder talked about his growth as a hitter in Charlotte. He said the Knights’ coaches had him spend a lot of time in the indoor batting cage upon his arrival to fine-tune his swing, and he thinks it has helped him be more on time at the plate.
Adolfo had a big home run on Thursday, smashing a hanging slider over the left-center fence. “In the first inning, he was missing with his fastball,” he recalled. “He was spiking everything. And so we eliminated the fastball. The only thing he was throwing for strikes was his off-speed, so we pretty much sat on it. I saw a hanger that he left over the plate and thought I could do something with it, and put a good swing on it.”
Photo credit: Laura Wolff/Charlotte Knights
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