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The Myrtle Beach Pelicans evened up their best-of-three series with the Winston-Salem Dash (White Sox) with a 4-3 win on Thursday night.
Until the ninth inning, the story of this game was Pelicans starter Brad Markey. Markey retired the first 14 batters of the game before issuing a two-out walk in the fifth inning. Markey kept the no-hitter intact until the eighth inning when he gave up a leadoff double to Keon Barnum. Barnum would go on to score the first Dash run when shortstop Gleyber Torres booted a fairly routine ground ball with two outs in the inning.
With the no-hitter gone, Markey exited after the eighth inning, having thrown 92 pitches, 63 for strikes. The final line on Markey was 8 innings pitched, allowing one unearned run on one hit. He struck out eight and walked only one.
Things looked fine as the Pelicans had a 4-1 lead going into the ninth and Michael Heesch took the mound. But Heesch gave up a leadoff single and a walk to put two on and have the tying run come to the plate with no outs. As Heesch was pitching to the next batter, Jake Peter, a nasty storm hit Ticketreturn.com Field, bringing high winds and horizontal rain. Heesch walked Peter in the rain to load the bases with no outs and Pelicans manager Mark Johnson summoned Jasvir Rakkar from the bullpen. But before Rakkar could throw a pitch, the umpires called a delay, which lasted 2 hours and 44 minutes.
When play resumed and with the game now past midnight local time, David Berg was called on for the save. Berg got the first two hitters he faced to hit ground balls, which scored two runs but also got two outs. Then after a wild pitch put a runner on third, Berg struck out Nick Basto to end the game and force a decisive game three tomorrow night.
With these pitching heroics, the Pelicans hitters could be afterthoughts, but center fielder Pin-Chieh Chen was 3 for 5 with an RBI double in the fifth inning and an RBI single in the sixth. He also scored the first run of the game in the third inning.
DH Chesny Young was 2 for 5 and scored on both of Chen's RBI. He also drove in left fielder Jeffrey Baez earlier in the sixth inning. Baez was 2 for 4.
So this sets up a decisive game three tomorrow night at Ticketreturn.com Field. Jonathan Martinez will take the mound for the Pelicans and he'll be opposed by the Dash's Brandon Brennan.