The Fayetteville Woodpeckers (33-41, 3-5) were unable to break through offensively against the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers (40-33, 5-3) on Sunday afternoon at Segra Stadium. Kannapolis took the series lead back with an 11-1 win over the Woodpeckers.
The Ballers took the lead in the second inning on a Wilber Sanchez two-run, inside-the-park home run off Fayetteville starter Carlos Espinosa (L, 0-1) and never looked back. After a rain delay of over an hour, Kannapolis kept on swinging and got a two-run double in the third from Chris Lanzilli to double the lead.
Amilcar Chirinos was able to mitigate the Cannon Ballers’ offense in the middle frames. The righthander went four innings allowing just one unearned run on two hits while tying a season high in strikeouts with six. The lone run he surrendered came on a fielding error in left by Luis Encarnacion in the fifth. Kannapolis padded its lead late with two runs in the eighth and four more in the ninth.
On the pitching side, the duo of Noah Schultz and Mason Adams kept the Woodpeckers off the board over eight innings with Adams striking out 11 over six scoreless. Zach Cable came on in the ninth to close it out and surrendered a one-out solo home run to Ricardo Balogh to lose the shutout bid. Cable then recorded the final two outs to give his team the win.
The series wraps on Monday evening at Segra. Left-hander Trey Dombroski gets the ball for Fayetteville while the Ballers send right-hander Tanner McDougal to the mound in search of the series victory.
The first pitch is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. The radio broadcast can be heard at https://www.milb.com/fayetteville/fans/audio-listen-live
Box score: https://www.milb.com/gameday/727988/final/box .
