Hoppers fall to Dash, waste Nick Garcia's fine start

GREENSBORO ― Nick Garcia deserved better.

Garcia pitched six shutout innings and left the game with a 2-0 lead, but Greensboro’s bullpen struggled mightily and the Winston-Salem Dash rallied for a 10-3 victory over the Grasshoppers at First National Bank on Wednesday night.

With the loss, Greensboro (54-65) slipped to 27-27 in the second half of the South Atlantic League, 5 games behind first-place Brooklyn in the North Division standings with just 10 games left in the regular season.

Winston-Salem also pulled even with Greensboro in the “Battle of I-40” rivalry series. The teams are 10-10 head-to-head this summer, although the Hoppers have won six of the last nine games against the Dash.

Winston-Salem went to work once Garcia left the game. Cabrera Weaver hit a three-run home run off losing pitcher Cristian Charle (2-1) in the seventh inning, a drive that ricocheted off the Wrangler sign beyond the center field fence and bounced back onto the field.

The Dash wasn’t done, batting around in the eighth inning and scoring six runs, then tacking on one more in the ninth. Before it was over, Winston-Salem had scored runs off of all four relievers the Hoppers sent to the mound: Charle, Eddy Yean, Logan Hofmann and Denny Roman.

Garcia, meanwhile, was terrific in his 22nd start of the season. He gave up just three hits and struck out five in six scoreless innings, spotting his fastball effectively and changing speeds to keep the Dash hitters off balance.

Garcia is a lanky, 23-year-old right-hander who was picked in the third round of the 2020 draft, and he ranks fourth among qualifiers in the Sally League with a 3.91 ERA. He has struck out 103 in 106 innings, and he has held opponents to a .224 batting average.

Abrahan Gutierrez went 2-for-3 to lead the Hoppers offense, and Mike Jarvis hit a ground-rule double, walked, stole a base and scored.

Jackson Glenn went 1-for-3, and he was hit in the head by a pitch with the bases loaded in the ninth inning ― two batters after pinch-hitter Luis Hernandez was hit in the head in his first plate appearance since joining the Hoppers. Both players stayed in the game, the wild pitches glancing off their batting helmets.