By Conor Loftus, Florida Sports Wire
JACKSONVILLE – Fort Pierce native Chase Solesky picked up his first win of the season as the Charlotte Knights defeated the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp 2-1 at 121 Financial Ballpark Saturday night.
Enmanuel De Jesus took the mound for the Jumbo Shrimp looking to build on Jacksonville’s 3-1 series lead with two games to play. After De Jesus recorded two scoreless innings, the Charlotte Knights would get on the board first in the top of the third on a Xavier Fernandez RBI double down the left field line.
The Knights extended their lead to 2-0 in the top of the fourth courtesy of a Fernandez sacrifice fly, his second RBI of the game. De Jesus was able to get through four innings allowing five hits, five walks, two runs, and finished the game with three strikeouts.
The story of the night was Solesky, the Knights starting right-hander who only allowed one hit through five innings. Solesky finished the night allowing three hits through six innings while punching out five with no runs scored. Solesky interestingly enough was 0-8 with a 6.86 ERA coming into tonight’s game.
Charles Leblanc pulled the Jumbo Shrimp within one in the bottom of the eighth on a bullet to left for his 10th homerun of the year.
With Jordan Leasure in the game to close it out for Charlotte up 2-1, Troy Johnston led off the bottom of the ninth inning with a well hit ball to left that was unfortunately caught right before the warning track. Leasure followed up with back-to-back strikeouts to seal the victory for the Knights.
