Napleton ties club record as Rockers top Legends 8-6

David Hess keeps giving High Point something valuable: a steady start the Rockers can build around. On Sunday at Truist Point, the right-hander won his fourth straight outing and improved to 5-3 as High Point finished off Lexington 8-6 in the series finale, a result that fit the club’s recent formula of veteran pitching and pressure-packed offense.

Hess worked six innings, allowed seven hits, struck out six and walked none. That control mattered because Lexington came out fast, taking a 2-0 lead on RBI singles by Nick Senzel and Jackson Feltner before Damiano Palmegiani kept the Legends in front with a solo homer for his fourth consecutive game. High Point answered immediately, tying the score in the first on doubles from Ethan Skender and Luke Napleton, then taking over with a five-run third inning that pushed the Rockers ahead 8-3.

Napleton was at the center of the turnaround. He finished 3-for-5 with three doubles and three RBIs, and his three doubles tied the Rockers’ club record for a single game. High Point piled up a season-high six doubles overall, with Napleton driving in runs and Alex Dickerson, Nolan Watson and Ryan McCarthy also contributing run-producing contact as the lineup kept Lexington under constant pressure.

That kind of offense has been a theme in a stretch that has helped High Point shake off a five-game losing streak. The Rockers had already beaten Lexington 10-4 on June 17 behind a six-run second inning, a game in which Napleton homered for his sixth of June and drove in his 20th run of the month. The back-to-back wins over a division rival pushed High Point to 23-31 and dropped Lexington to 24-30, a meaningful swing in the South Division race that also includes Charleston, Gastonia, Hagerstown and Southern Maryland.

The broader significance goes beyond one Sunday matinee. In a 126-game Atlantic League season built mostly around six-game series, the Rockers are showing how quickly a club can change course when it gets quality innings from a veteran arm and extra-base damage throughout the order. Hess has become a reliable anchor in that pattern, and Napleton’s surge has given it another layer of run production. High Point now heads to Waldorf, Maryland, for a Tuesday night meeting with the first-place Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.