ROCK CATS HAVE RILED BASEBALL GODS
It’s easy to pass judgment on Rock Cats manager Riccardo Ingram, facets of the team’s game or individual players during a time when losses are piling up.
As the Rock Cats were dropping 10 of their last 11 games, Ingram will be the first to tell you that he made mistakes. The players’ mistakes, of course, are magnified. Those who don’t actually witness them first hand hear about them on the radio or read about them in the newspaper. People make mistakes. Ballplayers and managers are people. They’re entitled.
Mistakes have undoubtedly played a role in the Rock Cats’ nose-dive, but what has been incredibly apparent to those who watch the team daily is they just cannot catch a break.
Whenever Ingram sends a runner home from second on a hard-hit single and challenges the outfielder to make a perfect throw, he’s been making it.
In the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, New Hampshire has two outs and nobody on in the top of the ninth inning of a 1-1 game. Aaron Mathews pokes a single. Chip Cannon doubles into the right-field corner.
As right fielder Matt Allegra comes up with the ball, Fisher Cats manager Bill Masse sends Mathews. Prevailing wisdom questions how in the world he can make such a decision. Mathews is going to be out by 15 feet. Not when second baseman Felix Molina drops Allegra’s relay throw.
It goes down in the book as simply an RBI double and the box score analyst has no idea.
Thursday night, New Britain trails 1-0 in the seventh inning. The Cats bats have been resilient all season, though, and fans sniff a rally when Dave Winfree belts a leadoff single.
With one out, Kyle Geiger launches a long fly ball to the deepest part of the park. Center fielder Dustin Majewski angles back and twist nearly 360 degrees to compensate for the brisk tailwind. Just when it looks like the wind is going to carry the ball beyond his reach, Majewski makes a remarkable catch that would have made Jim Edmonds proud.
But the Rock Cats get a reprieve. Brandon Roberts’ Baltimore chop is coming down to second baseman Ryan Klosterman just as Winfree is running by. All Klosterman has to do is catch the ball and make the tag, but he drops it.
Ingram figures that stroke of luck will change the Rock Cats’ fate, but somebody in that New Britain dugout must have done something pretty distasteful to bring the wrath of the baseball gods down this hard on the team. Rashad Eldridge hits an absolute rope that seems destined to split the outfielders and bang off the wall.
Mathews races over from left field, goes horizontal and snares a sure double in his glove.
If Ingram didn’t keep his head shaved, he would have been yanking out hair by the handful. Of the seven losses he’s endured in the last eight games, six were by one run. How’s that for splitting hairs?
Explain the losing streak? All he can say is, “That’s baseball.” He can only wait for those capricious baseball deities to quietly rise from the opponents’ dugout and meander back into the Rock Cats’ good graces. The hard part is that has to happen during a 12-game road trip or any dreams of postseason play can be in serious jeopardy by the Fourth of July.
As the Rock Cats were dropping 10 of their last 11 games, Ingram will be the first to tell you that he made mistakes. The players’ mistakes, of course, are magnified. Those who don’t actually witness them first hand hear about them on the radio or read about them in the newspaper. People make mistakes. Ballplayers and managers are people. They’re entitled.
Mistakes have undoubtedly played a role in the Rock Cats’ nose-dive, but what has been incredibly apparent to those who watch the team daily is they just cannot catch a break.
Whenever Ingram sends a runner home from second on a hard-hit single and challenges the outfielder to make a perfect throw, he’s been making it.
In the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, New Hampshire has two outs and nobody on in the top of the ninth inning of a 1-1 game. Aaron Mathews pokes a single. Chip Cannon doubles into the right-field corner.
As right fielder Matt Allegra comes up with the ball, Fisher Cats manager Bill Masse sends Mathews. Prevailing wisdom questions how in the world he can make such a decision. Mathews is going to be out by 15 feet. Not when second baseman Felix Molina drops Allegra’s relay throw.
It goes down in the book as simply an RBI double and the box score analyst has no idea.
Thursday night, New Britain trails 1-0 in the seventh inning. The Cats bats have been resilient all season, though, and fans sniff a rally when Dave Winfree belts a leadoff single.
With one out, Kyle Geiger launches a long fly ball to the deepest part of the park. Center fielder Dustin Majewski angles back and twist nearly 360 degrees to compensate for the brisk tailwind. Just when it looks like the wind is going to carry the ball beyond his reach, Majewski makes a remarkable catch that would have made Jim Edmonds proud.
But the Rock Cats get a reprieve. Brandon Roberts’ Baltimore chop is coming down to second baseman Ryan Klosterman just as Winfree is running by. All Klosterman has to do is catch the ball and make the tag, but he drops it.
Ingram figures that stroke of luck will change the Rock Cats’ fate, but somebody in that New Britain dugout must have done something pretty distasteful to bring the wrath of the baseball gods down this hard on the team. Rashad Eldridge hits an absolute rope that seems destined to split the outfielders and bang off the wall.
Mathews races over from left field, goes horizontal and snares a sure double in his glove.
If Ingram didn’t keep his head shaved, he would have been yanking out hair by the handful. Of the seven losses he’s endured in the last eight games, six were by one run. How’s that for splitting hairs?
Explain the losing streak? All he can say is, “That’s baseball.” He can only wait for those capricious baseball deities to quietly rise from the opponents’ dugout and meander back into the Rock Cats’ good graces. The hard part is that has to happen during a 12-game road trip or any dreams of postseason play can be in serious jeopardy by the Fourth of July.
posted by Ken Lipshez at
5:43 PM
1 Comments:
Ken,
You are doing a great job of trying to keep things positive. The Rock Cats are a fine team that can't catch a break. Yes, I agree, the pitching could be a little better. Theykeep on coming back. Things will change.
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