A SOBERING LOOK BACK; A PROMISING LOOK FORWARD
Leave it to Riccardo Ingram’s enigmatic Rock Cats to be playing their best ball of the season by far when the curtain comes down.
The Portland Sea Dogs, the Rock Cats’ spring training partners because their complexes are across town in Fort Myers, Fla., came into the five-game series needing a win or two to secure a playoff spot that they seemed to have wrapped up weeks ago.
So what happens? The Rock Cats, whose playoff mathematics stopped mattering after they lost three of four in Binghamton last week, sweep the series and wind up just a half-game out of a playoff spot.
Portland and New Hampshire finished the regular season 70-72 and will stage a one-game winner-take-all game Tuesday. The Rock Cats ended at 69-72 after a season-best seven-game winning streak.
“The guys just came to play,” Ingram said, after Monday’s crowd-pleasing 11-7 thrashing of the Sea Dogs. “I think a lot of it was all the stuff we went through as a team. We had to keep battling. We were younger than everybody else. This last series they finally started to understand what you have to do to compete here.”
The reason for 141 games played instead of the prescribed 142: a rainout on getaway day in Erie August 9 couldn’t be made up. The logistics of travel made it difficult to envision. The priorities of the major league clubs and their perspective on minor league playoffs make such a thing unthinkable. League rules made it impossible.
The slightest of shortcomings had Ingram thinking of all the games the Rock Cats should have won. His players learned a valuable lesson the hard way on playing every game to the hilt. If just one of those late-game leads could have been protected. Ingram heads back to Georgia with a duffel bag full of ifs and a strong belief in a productive future.
“I feel good about a lot of things,” he said. “We went from 14 under (.500, 64-78 last year) to the record we have this year and a mindset to build on next year. Next year we have to definitely be over .500. Anything else will be unacceptable.”
The prevailing sentiment is that many of these Cats should repeat. Ryan Mullins, Oswaldo Sosa and Yohan Pino should form a nucleus of a solid starting rotation. Jose Mijares, Eduardo Morlan and Armando Gabino have the stuff to alleviate the horrible bullpen woes that are at the heart of 2007 failures.
Who will be back among the position players would be rampant speculation at this point but it should start with shortstop Trevor Plouffe, center fielder Brandon Roberts, with Class A grads Dustin Martin and Florida State League All-Star Erik Lis among the newcomers.
Perhaps slugging first baseman Brock Peterson will repeat if Garrett Jones is still ahead of him. What is to become of Matt Moses is anybody’s guess.
Nonetheless, we’ll all look back on 2007 wondering what might have been. We’ll look ahead to 2008 confident about what can be.
The Portland Sea Dogs, the Rock Cats’ spring training partners because their complexes are across town in Fort Myers, Fla., came into the five-game series needing a win or two to secure a playoff spot that they seemed to have wrapped up weeks ago.
So what happens? The Rock Cats, whose playoff mathematics stopped mattering after they lost three of four in Binghamton last week, sweep the series and wind up just a half-game out of a playoff spot.
Portland and New Hampshire finished the regular season 70-72 and will stage a one-game winner-take-all game Tuesday. The Rock Cats ended at 69-72 after a season-best seven-game winning streak.
“The guys just came to play,” Ingram said, after Monday’s crowd-pleasing 11-7 thrashing of the Sea Dogs. “I think a lot of it was all the stuff we went through as a team. We had to keep battling. We were younger than everybody else. This last series they finally started to understand what you have to do to compete here.”
The reason for 141 games played instead of the prescribed 142: a rainout on getaway day in Erie August 9 couldn’t be made up. The logistics of travel made it difficult to envision. The priorities of the major league clubs and their perspective on minor league playoffs make such a thing unthinkable. League rules made it impossible.
The slightest of shortcomings had Ingram thinking of all the games the Rock Cats should have won. His players learned a valuable lesson the hard way on playing every game to the hilt. If just one of those late-game leads could have been protected. Ingram heads back to Georgia with a duffel bag full of ifs and a strong belief in a productive future.
“I feel good about a lot of things,” he said. “We went from 14 under (.500, 64-78 last year) to the record we have this year and a mindset to build on next year. Next year we have to definitely be over .500. Anything else will be unacceptable.”
The prevailing sentiment is that many of these Cats should repeat. Ryan Mullins, Oswaldo Sosa and Yohan Pino should form a nucleus of a solid starting rotation. Jose Mijares, Eduardo Morlan and Armando Gabino have the stuff to alleviate the horrible bullpen woes that are at the heart of 2007 failures.
Who will be back among the position players would be rampant speculation at this point but it should start with shortstop Trevor Plouffe, center fielder Brandon Roberts, with Class A grads Dustin Martin and Florida State League All-Star Erik Lis among the newcomers.
Perhaps slugging first baseman Brock Peterson will repeat if Garrett Jones is still ahead of him. What is to become of Matt Moses is anybody’s guess.
Nonetheless, we’ll all look back on 2007 wondering what might have been. We’ll look ahead to 2008 confident about what can be.
posted by Ken Lipshez at
9:49 PM
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