Jacksonville rallies past Charlotte on bizarre walk-off finish

Jacksonville turned a Wednesday afternoon at VyStar Ballpark into one of the week’s strangest finishes, erasing multiple deficits before Heriberto Hernández delivered the decisive blow in the ninth. Charlotte led 3-0, Jacksonville tied it, Charlotte went back in front, and still the Jumbo Shrimp found another answer in front of 4,217 fans under cloudy 82-degree skies.

The Knights opened the scoring with power. Dru Baker hit a two-run homer in the fifth, and LaMonte Wade Jr. added a solo shot in the sixth to push Charlotte ahead 3-0. Jacksonville’s response came in a hurry. The Jumbo Shrimp scored four times in the sixth, working walks, taking advantage of wild pitches and stringing together enough contact to flip the game and seize a lead that lasted only until Charlotte answered again.

The back-and-forth was not done. Charlotte reclaimed control with a three-run eighth, setting up a finish that seemed to belong to the visitors before Jacksonville extended the rally again. Johnny Olmstead’s two-run homer in the eighth tied the game back up and kept the home side within striking distance, turning the final innings into a true leverage test rather than a simple late comeback.

Then came the ninth. Agustín Ramírez and Deyvison De Los Santos opened the bottom half with singles, putting pressure on Charlotte immediately. Hernández followed with what first looked like a walk-off three-run homer, but the play was reviewed and changed. Hernández was ruled out for being physically assisted as he made his way home, and the official scoring became a walk-off RBI hit with De Los Santos scoring and Ramírez moving to third. The official game recap listed the final as 7-6 Jacksonville after the correction, while the club’s release described it as 8-6.

Tyler Zuber was the pitcher of record for Jacksonville, earning the win with 1.1 scoreless innings while stranding the potential go-ahead run in the ninth. The finish fit a homestand that already had Jacksonville ahead in the series against Charlotte, the Chicago White Sox’s Triple-A affiliate, and it came with added weight for a team defending its 2025 International League title and Triple-A National Championship. Hernández, 26, born in Bonao, Dominican Republic, and with a major-league debut already on his résumé, gave the Jumbo Shrimp the recognizable bat they needed when the game became a scramble for one last clean play.