On a cold Monday night at the ballpark, the Goldeyes bats were as frigid as the spring air. Chalk it up to the fact that you just won’t paint a Rembrandt every day over a 96-game schedule.
In a game that just didn’t have the buzz of the Opening Weekend series with Kansas City, the Gary SouthShore RailCats came to town, lulled the Goldeyes and the crowd to sleep, and literally walked away with a 4-2 victory.
Goldeyes pitching allowed three leadoff walks and all three came home to score.
“We didn’t do enough to win,” said Goldeyes manager Rick Forney. “Leadoff walks, defensive mistakes and a lack of timely hitting. That’s what cost us.”
It wasn’t so much the Fish played badly. It’s just that they didn’t do enough of the things that helped them get off to a 6-2 start.
Winnipeg opened the scoring with a run in the second as Juan Diaz doubled and scored on a two-out single by Josh Asanovich, but the RailCats scored twice in the fifth and once in each of the seventh and eighth and that was plenty on this night.
Goldeyes starter Daniel Haigwood went five complete innings and threw 97 pitches. He allowed two runs on only five hits and left the game with the score tied 2-2.
Reliever Adam Odom, who pitched an inning-and-a-third, gave up one run and took the loss while Andrew Cruse gave up a run in the eighth and pitched two-and-two-thirds innings.
“I thought everyone threw pretty good – other than the leadoff walks,” Forney admitted. “Our pitching was good enough to win, we just didn’t get any timely hits.”
The Fish managed only seven hits on the night. Diaz, with a double and a single, and red-hot Dustin Richardson, who doubled twice, were the only Goldeyes to record a multi-hit game. In fact, the Goldeyes had five first-pitch outs.
“We were impatient,” said Forney. “Let’s face it, if you face a pitcher in our league, especially early in the season, you force him to throw five or six pitches in every at bat. Wear him down. We needed somebody to step up and we didn’t get it. Five first-pitch outs means too much impatience at the plate.”
The Goldeyes and RailCats go at it again tonight at Canwest Park. It’ll be Bear Bay for the Fish and Onan Masaoka for the Cats.
Tuesday Morning Humour
The Story of a Conductor (courtesy of Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame honoured member Wayne Seidler):
He was a mediocre conductor of a mediocre orchestra. He had been having problems with the basses; they were the least professional of his musicians. It was the final performance of the season, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which required extra effort from the basses at the end. Earlier that evening, he found the basses celebrating one of their birthdays by passing a bottle around. As he was about to cue the basses, he knocked over his music stand. The sheet music scattered. As he stood in front of his orchestra, his worst fear was realized:
It was the bottom of the 9th, no score and the basses were loaded.
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