Bastidas sparks six-run fifth, Jacksonville edges Charlotte 6-5

Jesús Bastidas turned a tense night into Jacksonville’s best kind of win, cracking a three-run double in a fifth inning that put the Jumbo Shrimp ahead for good and set up Jack Ralston to finish a one-run game over Charlotte.

At VyStar Ballpark, with 5,810 fans under drizzle and a 6:37 p.m. first pitch, Jacksonville beat the Knights 6-5 in 2 hours and 35 minutes. The result mattered because the Jumbo Shrimp had already seen the series swing hard in both directions, from a 5-3 loss in the opener to a 7-6 walk-off the next night, and they entered the matchup at 18-18 trying to steady a season that had already shown how quickly momentum could move in Triple-A.

Agustín Ramírez put Jacksonville in front in the fourth when he doubled and later scored on a fielding error, but the real separation came in the fifth. Charlotte opened the frame with a hit-by-pitch and two walks, and Bastidas made the free passes pay with a bases-clearing double. Deyvison De Los Santos followed with an RBI double, and Ramírez finished the burst with a groundout that brought De Los Santos home for a 6-0 lead. Jacksonville scored five times in the inning and built enough cushion to survive what came next.

Charlotte answered with five runs in the sixth and nearly erased the whole margin in one push. Korey Lee delivered the biggest swing with a two-run double, then scored on a balk by Tyler Zuber. LaMonte Wade Jr. and Caden Connor also added RBI singles, turning a comfortable lead into a one-run game and forcing Jacksonville to manage the final six outs carefully.

That is where the night changed from a bullpen bridge to a test of nerve. With the margin down to 6-5, Jacksonville stayed with Jack Ralston for the eighth and ninth, and the right-hander threw two spotless innings for his second save of the season. Ralston faced six batters, while Gusto worked 5.1 innings and Zuber handled the middle inning that Charlotte attacked. Gusto took the win despite allowing five earned runs, a reminder that the Shrimp did their damage early enough to cover for a shaky middle stretch.

The save mattered beyond one box score. Jacksonville protected a series that could have slipped again after Charlotte’s rally, and it preserved bullpen arms for the next night, when every inning would again matter in a division race that is already feeling like October baseball in May.