Final score – Hickory 12, Rome 6
(Media release from the Rome Braves):
The Rome Braves welcomed the Hickory Crawdads to town for the first time in 2022 for six straight games. The Braves and Crawdads would both enter the night’s contest trailing the first Bowling Green Hot Rods. The Crawdads would be two and a half games back, and the Braves would be three and a half games back.
Rome would send righty Roddery Munoz to the mound in the opener. The last time Munoz took the mound at home was in a rain shortened loss to Wilmington, so redemption was on the mind of Munoz. Hickory’s Tekoah Roby getting the ball for the Crawdads. Hickory would jump out quick and not look back, scoring three runs in the first inning. An Aaron Zavala home run, Cody Freeman sacrifice fly, and Keyber Rodriguez single would chase Munoz from the game before the opening frame ended.
The top of the second would see Hickory tack on three more with an Evan Carter triple and a Trevor Hauver double. An Aaron Zavala double and Evan Carter grand slam would put the Crawdads up eleven runs to none before the third inning was over.
Rome would get on the board with home runs from Javier Valdes and Jacob Pearson to make the score eleven to three in the bottom of the fifth. Cade Bunnell would smack his fifth home run of the year in the bottom of the seventh to close the gap to eight runs. A Trevor Hauver home run would make the score twelve runs to four. Javier Valdes would drive in two more runs on a single, giving the Braves their fifth and sixth runs.
Despite the late surge, Hickory would cruise to a win in game one over the Braves by a final score of twelve runs to six. This loss marks the fourth series opening loss for Rome, dropping their overall record to thirty-five wins and twenty-nine losses. The Crawdads and Braves will turn around quickly for a 1:00 pm start on Wednesday, with Dylan Dodd getting the starting nod for Rome.
In other news from the Rome Braves, Vaughn Grissom has been named the South Atlantic League Player of the Week for the week of June 13-19.
