Tyler Guilfoil fans 13 as Legends roll past Rockers 7-1

Tyler Guilfoil turned Truist Point into a showcase for seven overpowering innings, fanning 13 High Point Rockers and allowing only one run on five hits without a walk as the Lexington Legends cruised to a 7-1 victory. The Lexington native delivered the season high for strikeouts in his Atlantic League outing and gave the Legends the kind of control they had been missing during an uneven stretch.

Lexington backed him immediately and made High Point chase from the first inning. Damiano Palmegiani opened with a leadoff home run, Ronnie Dawson followed two batters later with a two-run blast, and Nick Senzel added a solo shot in the third. By the time the dust settled on the early innings, the Legends had built a 4-0 lead and put the Rockers in the kind of hole they never climbed out of.

The Legends kept adding to the margin in the fourth, and even after High Point finally broke through on Ryan McCarthy’s RBI double, the game never shifted back in the Rockers’ favor. Dawson put the finishing touch on the night in the ninth with his second homer, a two-run drive that pushed the lead to 7-1 and capped a 3-for-5 performance with four RBI. Senzel also went 3-for-5 with a homer and an RBI, while Palmegiani finished 2-for-4 with a homer, a double, an RBI and two runs scored.

Lexington finished with 14 hits and got help from the bullpen, too. Jack Lynch worked two scoreless innings and struck out four, as the Legends pitching staff combined for 17 strikeouts while limiting High Point to six hits. Guilfoil, who is 3-4 after the win, is a Lexington, Kentucky native born Jan. 19, 2000, and was drafted by the Houston Astros in the eighth round of the 2022 MLB Draft out of Kentucky. Listed by MiLB at 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, the right-hander now has a start that can reset a series and reinforce the kind of identity Lexington wants as it moved to 24-29 and headed home for a homestand against Hagerstown.