Bill Hass on Sunday Greensboro Grasshoppers Baseball:“Today is over with”

from Bill Hass with ‘Bill on Baseball’, at www.gsohoppers.com:

“Today is over with”

Sometimes there’s no need to say much after a baseball game.

“Today is over with in my book,” said Hoppers manager David Berg Sunday.

That’s pretty much the case after most games, but especially after your team has taken a 14-5 thrashing at the hands — or rather, the bats — of Kannapolis. That result came one day after the Hoppers applied a similar thrashing to the Intimidators, 12-2 on Saturday.

It’s not as hard as you might think to bounce back from a game like that. Baseball is played nearly every day, so win or lose players have to wipe the previous game from their minds.

“Get a good dinner tonight and tomorrow is a new day,” Berg said.

There really wasn’t much else to add. After breaking on top 2-0 in the first inning, the Hoppers gave up the next 12 runs from the second through the fifth innings. Starter Scott Lyman continued to struggle and was unable to get out of the fourth. James Nygren labored through a nightmare fifth, surrendering eight runs, three of them unearned.

“I think he was a little tired,” said pitching coach Blake McGinley. “He’s been our go-to guy lately. His velocity was down and he was flat in the (strike) zone. Sometimes you’re just not going to have it.”

Kannapolis pounded out 17 hits, including home runs by Bill Rice and Chris Curley. Rice hit for the cycle — his home run in the second followed by a single in the third, a double in the fifth and a triple in the eighth. It was the second cycle in Kannapolis history, with the last one coming in 2008.

For the Hoppers, Matt Smith had a solo home run and an RBI single and Josh Adams had two hits and an RBI.

The series continues Monday with Charlie Lowell, which pitched no-hit ball into the seventh inning of his last start, on the mound for Greensboro.