Gastonia completes six-game sweep, extends winning streak to eight

Gastonia did not just finish a sweep. It kept hammering Staten Island until the FerryHawks finally folded, then closed a 13-8 Father’s Day win at CaroMont Health Park that pushed the Ghost Peppers to eight straight victories and a firmer grip on the South Division race.

The tone was set immediately. Nate Scantlin opened the game with a home run, Grant Lavigne followed with a two-run blast to right-center, and Scantlin later went deep again to the opposite field as Gastonia jumped ahead 5-1. When Duane Underwood Jr. exited early with an injury, the night could have tilted fast. Instead, Nate Peden stepped in and gave Gastonia exactly the kind of emergency bridge a team in a long winning streak needs, working 3.2 no-hit innings with two strikeouts to keep Staten Island from taking over.

The FerryHawks eventually made it interesting. They scored three runs in the sixth and tied the game in the seventh on Joshua Palacios’s RBI double, turning what looked like a runaway into a tense finish. Gastonia answered the way a first-place contender does when the margin shrinks: with pressure, baserunning and depth. In the bottom of the seventh, Jack Reinheimer scored on Scantlin’s stolen-base sequence, and Bryson Brigman added an RBI double to push Gastonia back in front.

Then came the inning that broke Staten Island for good. Gastonia scored six runs in the bottom of the eighth on only three hits, with Anthony Prato driving in two runs, Brigman adding another RBI, Jace Rinehart lifting a sacrifice fly and Chris Proctor chipping in an RBI single. Jake Miednik entered with the bases loaded and nobody out in the top of the inning and escaped on just two pitches, rolling a double play before getting a flyout to preserve the lead. Staten Island still scored three times in the ninth, but the game was already decided.

The sweep was the latest proof that Gastonia’s surge is bigger than one hot weekend. The Ghost Peppers had already won seven straight with a 12-3 win on June 20, when Justin Wylie hit a grand slam, and earlier in the month they tied the Atlantic League record with a 15th consecutive win on June 10. Gastonia had also come within one game of the league’s all-time streak mark on May 31. After Sunday’s win, the club had cut its deficit against Southern Maryland by one game and trailed by four with nine games left in the first half. In a South Division that still includes Charleston, High Point, Lexington and Southern Maryland, the message is clear: Gastonia is not riding a streak. It is building a statement.