OK, thank you all for the knowledge share and steps I could try. 

I tested out the workarounds - both boot options timerForceTSC=TRUE and tscSyncSkip=TRUE.

The results were a little different in that the boot process stated but ended up the same crash. Message is "Requested malloc size 104001552 failed, caller offset 0x453ff17f.

Please see the attached screenshot. 

Thank you to all that contributed to finding a solution. Presently running ESXi 7u3 for now as a workaround. 

MJ