Hoppers fall short to Crawdads 5-4
from Bill Hass with Bill on Baseball(Greensboro Grasshoppers) at www.gsohoppers.com
There were signs of improvement for the Hoppers Tuesday night, but not enough to translate into a win.
Hickory handed Greensboro its fifth straight defeat, 5-4 at NewBridge Bank Park. The four runs were the most the Hoppers have scored in a game this young season.
“We put some runs on the board and finally got a hit with runners in scoring position,” said manager Kevin Randel. “It’s not ideal, but we’re trusting the process.”
And the process is putting a lot of young players on the field and letting them develop. So far, that development has been slow in coming.
The Hoppers showed some spark by battling back from a 4-1 deficit to within 4-3 and cutting a 5-3 margin to 5-4. But, as has been the norm in the early going, there were too many wasted opportunities.
In the first inning, Rony Cabrera drew a one-out walk and went to third on Josh Naylor’s single. Angel Reyes hit an apparent single to right field and Cabrera scored, but Naylor hesitated to see if the ball would be caught and wound up being thrown out at second base. That cost Reyes a hit (he still got credit for the RBI on the fielder’s choice) but cost the Hoppers an out and short-circuited the inning.
“It was an instinctual thing,” Randel said. “He waited to see what the right fielder would do and it ended up being a bad read.”
The sixth inning had a chance to be a big one. Zach Sullivan reached first on a dropped third strike, Anfernee Seymour singled and Cabrera walked to load the bases with no outs. Naylor singled in two runs, but the rally died there when Reyes, Goodman and Taylor Munden were all retired.
Cabrera got the team’s first triple of the season with one out in the eighth and scored on Naylor’s groundout but Reyes flied out to end the inning.
Naylor’s two hits and three RBIs were an encouraging sign, although there’s plenty of work to be done.
“He hasn’t driven a ball in the gap yet, which is something we’re waiting for,” Randel said.
Starting pitcher Justin Jacome didn’t have great stuff, allowing four hits in 3 2/3 innings, but he limited the damage to one run before leaving the game because of his pitch count. Nestor Bautista followed and retired the first five batters he faced. Then he gave up a double, single and three-run homer (to Tyler Sanchez) in a span of four pitches and suddenly a 1-1 game became a 4-1 Hickory lead in the sixth inning.
Bautista was tagged for a solo homer in the seventh by Eric Jenkins.
“That can happen,” said pitching coach Brendan Sagara. “He’s aggressive, pounds the strike zone and gets them to swing the bat. Sometimes the hitters pop up and sometimes they get the barrel on the ball.”
The series finishes Wednesday with a school kids’ game that begins at 10:45 a.m.