White Sox Minor Keys: June 27, 2021

I’m on vacation this week, albeit not entirely from baseball. For one, the shift in time zones is well suited to pitch in with covering the Minor Keys at the end of a night. There’s also the matter that I’m still watching baseball.

My in-laws are boosters of the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks in the Alaska Baseball League, a collegiate summer wood-bat circuit, and they’ve gifted me a t-shirt here and a cap there over the years. I finally got a chance to see what I had been repping from a distance on Sunday, and while the Chinooks lost to the Anchorage Glacier Pilots by a score of 6-1, everything about the afternoon was a pleasure.

For one, there’s the backdrop of Lee Jordan Field.

It also reminded me of what Minor League Baseball lost when MLB eliminated the short-season leagues, which is providing a cheap form of baseball — free in this case, as the Chinooks are the only ABL team that doesn’t charge admission — for a community to gather around during the best two weather months of the year.

We may head back for a game on Thursday, because I’m curious what it looks like to play a game in a ballpark with no lighting at 9:30 p.m. In the meantime, I’ll continue to punch out the Minor Keys while appreciating Josh and the others doing the heavy lifting in my absence.

Nashville 5, Charlotte 4

• Blake Rutherford went 0-for-5 with a strikeout.
• Jake Burger was 2-for-3 with a walk.
• Reynaldo López: 6 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 11 K, 1 HR, 1 WP
• Tyler Johnson: 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K

Birmingham 10, Pensacola 3

• Micker Adolfo went 2-for-4 with a grand slam, double and a walk.
• Carlos Pérez was 2-for-3 by going 2-for-3 with a homer and a walk.
• Konnor Pilkington: 5 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 1 HR

Highlights:

Asheville 9, Winston-Salem 3

• Yoelqui Céspedes went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
• Yolbert Sanchez went 1-for-4.
• So did Lenyn Sosa, with a strikeout.
• Luis Curbelo went 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
• Duke Ellis went 1-for-3 with a walk, and was picked off.

Kannapolis 11, Fayetteville 5

• Jose Rodriguez went 0-for-5 with a walk and two stolen bases.
• Bryan Ramos went 2-for-4 with a homer, walk, strikeout and stolen base.
• Luis Mieses went 1-for-5 with a triple.
• Harvin Mendoza, 1-for-3 with a walk, strikeout and a sac fly.
• Caberea Weaver was 0-for-4 with a walk, strikeout and two stolen bases.
• James Beard, 1-for-2 with two walks and a stolen base.
• Andrew Dalquist: 3.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K

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