Bill Hass on Baseball:Running mistakes contribute to Hoppers loss

“Baseball gives a team plenty of opportunities to learn from its mistakes and Hoppers manager David Berg hopes that’s what they will do.”

from Bill Hass with Bill on Baseball(Greensboro Grasshoppers) at www.gsohoppers.com….

Running mistakes contribute to Hoppers loss

Baseball gives a team plenty of opportunities to learn from its mistakes and Hoppers manager David Berg hopes that’s what they will do.

An abundance of mistakes running the bases cost the Hoppers on a windy, chilly (64 degrees at the start, 55 at the finish) Saturday night as they absorbed a 7-3 loss to the Hickory Crawdads at NewBridge Bank Park.

The game was similar to Thursday’s season opener in some respects. On Thursday, Greensboro jumped to a 3-1 lead but was outscored 7-0 over the final six innings. Saturday the Hoppers broke on top again by 3-1 in the first three innings, then were outscored 6-0.

Austin Dean was picked off third base in the first inning and Victor Castro was called out on an appeal play for leaving the base too early trying to move from second to third on a fly ball out.

And Berg didn’t exempt himself from mistakes. He waved runner Juan Avila around third in the second inning only to see him thrown out at the plate. In the third inning, he held up runner Carlos Lopez at third, but Lopez, after hesitating a step, kept on heading home and scored.

“I screwed that up,” Berg said. “I’m trying to figure it out after a year away (as an infield coordinator the the Marlins).”

The end result was the Hoppers cost themselves one or two runs and a bigger lead and Hickory took advantage. The Crawdads touched starter Ryan Newell for four runs, two unearned, in the fourth inning when they took the lead for good. He surrendered a solo homer to Kellin Deglan, issued a walk, had an error behind him by shortstop Justin Bohn, wild-pitched a run in and gave up a two-run shot to Lewis Brinson.

“He got two 3-and-0 counts and they got aggressive on offense,” said pitching coach Jeremy Powell. “Mix in a walk and an error and the inning got long on him.”

Newell had to wait on the mound while one of the between-innings activities ran long, which might have affected his concentration.

“I know it could affect a young pitcher,” Powell said, “but we’ll never know. You’ve got to continue to work and do the job.”

On offense, the Hoppers came up with 11 hits, three each by Lopez and Avery Romero. One of Romero’s was a two-run homer in the second inning. Bohn drove in the other run in the third inning. Between the hits and four walks, the Hoppers had plenty of baserunners but stranded 11, the same number as Thursday.

“We swung the bats well,” Berg said. “I counted 12 hard-hit balls. We had opportunities but we couldn’t get a hit when we needed to.”

The Hoppers go after a split in the first series of the season when they play the Crawdads again today at 4 p.m. Domingo German draws the starting assignment for Greensboro.