Game 9 Recap: Hell or High Water

“We won’t let the team fail”

By Joe Horton

WEST OAKLAND—A game that almost wasn’t wasn’t quite enough to get the Ballers back on track.

The unseasonable morning rain—“I heard it at six a.m. and thought oh no,” said Head Groundskeeper Anthony Alejandrez—for a moment put the game’s playability in doubt. But the B’s and the Long Beach Coast did meet for their final game in the set, with the Coast taking their third in a row and four of six in the teams’ first meeting by a score of 9-5.

Slow starts have plagued the B’s this season, but Jake Allgeyer gave the home team a spark in the first inning with a two-run double that plated Esai Santos and Tremayne Cobb. Allgeyer is having a superb start to his year, hitting .400, good for top-ten in the Pioneer League.

The Coast’s second inning against Oakland starting pitcher Charlie Hurley quickly erased that lead thanks to a bases-loaded walk, an Eddy Pelc single, and a Matthew Bardowell grand slam. Several Coasters have terrorized the B’s in this homestand, none more so than Pelc, who is hitting a torrid .441, also top-ten in the league.

Hurley then left the game in the fourth inning with an injury, prompting another long stretch from the bullpen. Liam Rocha shone over 2 2/3 scoreless innings with five strikeouts.

It was “Ballers Save the Earth” Day and a Skyline High hat drop at Raimondi, and the bright green giveaway reusable Miyawaki forest bags and red B’s caps were electric against the bleachers. But the crowd was restless much of the night, the most apt beer-related appraisal coming from Ice Cold Kenny: “Nobody’s buying tonight. Maybe it’s the wind.” The “tarps off” shirtless trend viral across sports made its way to Raimondi after the rain, hoping to spark a rally.

With both pitching staffs settling in for the middle innings (“Did we even need to play the middle half?” reflected superfan Mike Chouinard), there was no scoring until the bottom of the 8th when do-it-all-guy Allgeyer hit a two-run homer with Santos again on the bases. Recently re-acquired Cam Bufford made it back-to-back jacks with his first long ball since returning to Oakland. The B’s had cut the deficit to 6-5 heading into the 9th.

But the comeback was not to be.

The Coast loaded the bases with no outs as the B’s gave back all three runs they’d scrapped in the 8th, and Oakland then went down in order in the bottom of the 9th.

Walks—a rarity last season—were prevalent today, with B’s pitching issuing ten free bases in addition to two hit batters. The B’s gave up nine runs over only two innings.

***

With the Ballers sitting at 3-6 and about to welcome the RedPocket Mobiles—who just won their first game of the season—into town for the final three games of the opening homestand, I spoke to Assistant General Manager Tyler Petersen for a big-picture, inside-the-building reality check about the team’s early struggles.

“It’s certainly not the start we wanted,” Petersen said. “I think one of the most frustrating parts of the start of the season is Missoula and Long Beach: Missoula, one of the best teams every year…Long Beach is a reconstituted team that had a lot of guys from that championship team in Idaho Falls…They're a really good team. If we were 3-6, and we were playing good ball, I don't think we'd be worried. It's the fact that we have so many players who are talented, that were All-Stars, that were All-Conference players, who have a ton of talent, who are not playing to that talent. So, we have guys that we know are much better than their ERAs, their performances.”

Petersen emphasized that the B’s want to work through challenges with their players and give them as many opportunities as possible and trust that they will figure out successful approaches. Part of the problem, he said, is expectations.

“We've been way better than the [other PBL] teams for a good amount of time. We've won three straight halves. So, it's a little bit new for us to see ourselves in the same light as some of the other teams, where we are a middle-of-the-pack team…We are a below average team right now, when I think we could be much better.”

I asked if he thinks the team echoes his sentiments and the front office’s hopes that they have a much higher ceiling.

“The good news is that we have a solid core of guys who were with us last year who are going to be fine. Almost all of them are in the hitting group, and then there's Braydon Nelson and Gabe Tanner on the pitching side. There's a group of eight who are going right through this, no problem. They're gonna be all right. Hell or high water. For some other guys who want to make a good impression, that either are getting their first chance out of college, or were in affiliate ball and coming here now, there might be some pressure to say, ‘I have this new audience. I have a new staff evaluating me,’ and the sample size right now is three, four, five appearances.”

Petersen also emphasized the significance of early season injuries and lineup adjustments.  “We've already made some changes where we thought we've needed to. We've had two pitchers go down with injuries. So we've had to bring guys in. We do not want to have a revolving door of players, because that's really not a success story for teams in this league,” he said. “But coming into camp, two of our starters went down with injuries before we even walked through the door…So we're already sort of having to start from behind.”

So, what’s the plan going forward?

“It's just a matter of replicating success every day, sticking to what you can stick to, and we believe in these guys. And we have loyalty to a lot of guys, but as Aaron [Miles] and I always say, we have a loyalty to win it. So this team has to win. We won't let the team fail, and we also prioritize our player development. So that's a delicate balance at times. I don't think we have as many flaws as our box scores say. Am I being too naive in saying that? Should I let the results speak to me a little bit more? Maybe. We want to see guys play 20 games, we want to see pitchers throw in seven or eight. We don't want to be too hasty. It's a two-half season, and we're off to a bad start—a bad start being three games under 500. That's the bad start. But it's something we certainly can scrape ourselves out of.”

Joe Horton is the editor of Dispatches from Raimondi.