Gamel, Alvarez power Gwinnett past Norfolk in Kim's rehab debut
Ha-Seong Kim went 2-for-4 in his Stripers debut as Gwinnett rallied past Norfolk 5-3, with Ben Gamel and Nacho Alvarez Jr. delivering the late blows.
Ha-Seong Kim’s first game back in live action gave Gwinnett exactly the kind of checkpoint Atlanta wanted, and the Stripers turned it into a 5-3 win over Norfolk on Tuesday night at Harbor Park. Kim, on rehab assignment after the Braves announced his arrival for the start of the six-game road series, went 2-for-4 with a run scored as Gwinnett erased a 3-1 deficit with four runs over the seventh and eighth innings.
The timing mattered as much as the result. Kim, a 30-year-old, five-year major league veteran from Bucheon, Republic of Korea, entered the game with 1,896 big-league at-bats, 458 hits, 52 home runs and 217 RBI on his MiLB profile, and his Stripers debut offered a first look at how ready he is to handle everyday work again. Gwinnett had sent him on rehab to Columbus on April 28 before moving him to Norfolk, and the eighth-inning sequence in particular hinted at a player who could soon rejoin the parent club’s infield mix.
Ben Gamel set the tone early and kept Gwinnett in the game. He opened the scoring with a solo homer in the third inning, then delivered again in the seventh, lining a two-run single that tied the game at 3-3 and completed the Stripers’ push through the middle frames. Nacho Alvarez Jr. followed in the eighth with the swing that put the game away, driving a two-run homer to left field after Kim singled ahead of him. Gamel finished 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBI, while Alvarez’s blast gave Gwinnett its first lead since the early innings.
Norfolk had taken control after Jose Barrero’s RBI single got the Tides on the board and Christian Encarnacion-Strand later added a two-run homer in the sixth. But Gwinnett’s bullpen answered after the comeback, with Dylan Dodd, Daysbel Hernández and Rolddy Muñoz each working a scoreless inning to close it out. The Stripers improved to 21-13, moved to 5-2 in series openers and picked up their eighth comeback victory of the season, a number that says as much about their resilience as it does about the value of getting Kim back into the lineup.
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