Bill Hass on Baseball:Losing streak magnifies Hoppers’ mistakes

Losing streak magnifies Hoppers’ mistakes
from Bill Hass with Bill on Baseball(Greensboro Grasshoppers) at www.gsohoppers.com

Although Opening Day was just a week ago, it seems much longer than that for the Grasshoppers.

Time slows down when a team is in a losing streak. All the excitement and momentum of the 3-2 win over West Virginia has long since faded. The Hoppers have played six games since the opener and lost all six. The latest in the string came Wednesday, when they bowed to the Hickory Crawdads 5-2. The energy and enthusiasm of the sixth-graders on School Kids Day didn’t carry over to the Hoppers’ performance.

After the game, which began at 10:45 a.m., the team boarded buses for a long ride to Lakewood, N.J., to begin the first road trip of the season. The Hoppers will visit the BlueClaws for four games, swing down to Delmarva for three more and return home April 21.

“Hopefully we got this out of our system,” said manager Kevin Randel. “Everybody goes through a six-game skid. It’s just magnified when it’s at the beginning of the season.”

The Hoppers closed their home stand with just 13 runs and 38 hits, none of them home runs. Runners in scoring position, scarce as they were, usually were stranded. When Zach Sullivan doubled in a run in the second inning, it was Greensboro’s first hit with two outs and a runner in scoring position in 21 tries.

“When you don’t get runners home, that’s magnified because our opportunities have been so slim,” Randel said.

On Wednesday the Hoppers stranded runners on third base in the second inning, second and third in the fourth inning and third base in the sixth inning. In addition, Anfernee Seymour was thrown out at home plate in the fifth inning.

On that play Seymour was on first base when Angel Reyes ripped a double into the left fielder corner. With Seymour, the team’s fastest runner, in full stride, Randel took a chance and waved him home, forcing the Crawdads to make a perfect play.

And that’s exactly what they did. Left fielder Darius Day played the ball off the wall with his bare hand and fired an excellent relay throw to shortstop Yeyson Yrizarri, who was about 10 feet behind third base. Yrizarri pivoted and, with his strong arm, rifled a throw to catcher Chuck Moorman, who slapped the tag on the sliding Seymour for the third out.

Teams that are 6-1 like Hickory make those plays; teams that are 1-6 like the Hoppers don’t.

Sullivan had a good day with his RBI double and a triple that led to the second run on Rony Cabrera’s groundout. That sliced Hickory’s lead to 3-2, but reliever Ben Meyer gave up single runs in the eighth and ninth to squelch any chances of a rally.

Rodrigo Vigil had two hits, including a double, for the Hoppers and is 6-for-14 this season.

Starter Cody Poteet, not as sharp as he was in his first start, took the loss, tagged for three runs in 4 1/3 innings.

NOTES: Outfielder Isael Soto was placed on the disabled list (tendinitis) and replacement Jhonny Santos had a fine game. Santos walked twice, got a hit and laid down a nice sacrifice bunt, officially going 1-for-1 … Dylan Moore hit a solo home run for Hickory … Brett Martin picked up and win and Jeffrey Springs got the save … Gabriel Castellanos will start the Hoppers’ road game Thursday in Lakewood.