If 51s are better than 2-8, we’ll have to take their word for it
Let’s get this part out of the way: It’s not the new league or the travel. It is definitely not the weather for a Triple-A baseball franchise that spent more than three decades in Syracuse, which exists under a perpetual shade of dark gray and where locals have been known to define summer as three months of bad sledding.
What it is: Pitching without hitting one day.
Hitting without pitching the next day.
And shoddy fielding everywhere.
"We’re stuck in a funk right now," 51s first baseman Brett Harper said. "We’re not putting everything together and (opponents) are capitalizing on our mistakes and we’re not on theirs.
"We know how to play the game. We’re too good to keep going like we are going."
They aren’t very good right now.
You know things are off to a slow start when the best home team to play at Cashman Field this April has been Bishop Gorman High.
The 51s won’t argue with Colorado Springs leaving town, thank you very much, given how one-sided things have been to begin the season. The Sky Sox beat Las Vegas 3-1 on Sunday and conclude a four-game series tonight.
It’s the fifth time in six games Colorado Springs has beaten Las Vegas, the new affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. It might not matter who the 51s are facing right now. They are 2-8 as much because of themselves as any opponent.
Ten games. Eighteen errors. It could be the struggles of your neighborhood Little League team, but it’s what 51s manager Mike Basso has seen his team amass during a season not two weeks old.
Las Vegas made one only miscue Sunday, but it led to an eighth-inning run for the winners. A double was bumbled into a triple, and a sacrifice fly followed after the 51s — for some reason — chose not to walk the No. 2 hitter to set up a double-play situation with one out in a one-run game.
Boy, when things are going bad.
A half-inning earlier, the 51s’ Russ Adams opened with a triple. He never scored, but was fortunate not to be struck in the head by a few line drive fouls.
Thus, your silver lining from a beautiful afternoon in front of 3,717 at the ballpark.
"Guys are battling, trying to put together good at-bats, hitting a lot of balls hard," Basso said. "We shouldn’t have any problem coming out of this. We need a break here or there. Things will turn. We aren’t doing the little things and haven’t been able to overcome it right now.
"But that will happen. We’ll be able to do it. I like this team. We have a great opportunity here. Once we begin swinging the bats like we can in this ballpark and in this league, we’ll be fine."
His reasoning why makes more sense than not. The roster Las Vegas opened the season with included 11 names that spent time in the major leagues last year.
There are veterans throughout the clubhouse, guys smart enough to know the only thing of importance won in April is an NCAA basketball championship.
Several players were closer to making the Blue Jays than not coming out of spring training. Two already have been promoted because of injuries in Toronto. It’s a team that should do more than merely compete each night. It has better talent than 2-8, for whatever that’s worth.
But for a team confident it could arrive in town and win the city’s first Pacific Coast League title since 1988, the start is forgettable. Ten games is nothing. It’s a catnap to a sixth-month hibernation. It’s a few peanuts in a five-pound bag of trail mix.
But this isn’t much to speak of, either: Eighteen errors, a .247 team batting average and a 5.85 team ERA. The 51s have played 27 innings at Cashman and scored in only three of them.
"We have to start scoring some runs and not putting the pressure on our pitchers to go out there and only give up three (or fewer) runs each time," said Harper, one of those veterans in his ninth professional season. "We have to start putting more pressure on the defense. We’re just not clicking right now. One phase is good, but the other isn’t.
"It’s April. It can only get better."
Nothing in baseball is ever won this early, but habits can be formed. The 51s would be smart to begin pursuing much better habits.
Or at least catch a Bishop Gorman game and take notes.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
