By PAUL GOTHAM
ROCHESTER — Wednesday’s mid-afternoon air temperature in Fayetteville, GA hovered in the mid 60s. Worth noting because the Rochester Red Wings head south to the Peach State for their next series starting Thursday night against the Gwinnett Braves.
Getting away from the chilly confines has to be a welcomed prospect for the Wings who fell to 0-3 after a 7-1 loss to to the Syracuse Chiefs at Frontier Field.
One home series erased because of inclement weather and a second set challenged even the most optimistic of individuals to find positives.
“We just have to be realistic,” Red Wing right fielder Jake Cave said. “Obviously, we don’t want to make excuses ever. To not play baseball for over a week and not see any live pitching and not be able to do anything on the baseball field and then go out there and expect to really perform is tough. Obviously, we didn’t play well. We can play better. But it was a tough first home series.”
Wednesday offered plenty of salt for Wing wounds.
Syracuse starter Austin Voth was 0-3 in his six previous starts against Rochester. The right-hander had allowed a total of 24 earned runs on 34 hits over 27.1 innings during those outings. He issued 18 walks while fanning 21.
On Wednesday, Voth looked like the second coming of Stephen Strasburg who rolled through Syracuse on his way to the majors not too long ago. Voth allowed one run on three hits over 5.2 innings. He set down nine on strikes and handed out one free pass throwing 92 pitches – 63 for strikes.
Fittingly, he left the game after a 13-pitch at bat where he fanned Leonardo Reginatto, and battery mate Spencer Kieboom gunned down Zack Granite attempting to swipe second.
“You can think of all sorts of reasons any time you don’t win a ball game you’re doing that every time,” first-year Wings manager Joel Skinner said. “You’re always resetting. Every day is a new day. That’s how you go about it.”
Wings starter Dietrich Enns,who hadn’t allowed more than seven hits in any of nine starts during the 2017 season, surrendered five base knocks before retiring a batter. Syracuse scored twice in the first and did not surrender its lead.
Possibility existed when Enns escaped the first having allowed just two runs. Cave connected on a two-out round tripper in the home half, and a win to end the series looked salvageable.
“He did a good job of damage control,” Skinner noted. “He really did. For how it went in the early going and the amount of pitches.
“It could have went upside down real fast and it didn’t.”
But Enns never got on track. He left the game with two outs in the fourth having allowed four runs on nine hits and two walks.
At the same time, the Wings offense stayed in neutral falling to get multiple runners on base until the ninth. In Monday’s season opener, Rochester finished 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position. On Wednesday, the only Wing to get to second in the first eight innings was Cave on his home run.
“We just couldn’t anything generated after that,” Cave said of his home run. “We got to put it behind us and come out swinging next game.
“Really it’s one of those things when you’re not feeling comfortable. There’s a lot of times in this game where you’re not going to feel comfortable. You just got to compete. Sooner or later you get a couple of guys in the lineup that are feeling comfortable and they starting hitting really well. Everybody else kinda feeds off that, and that’s how a good baseball team works.”
The last time Rochester lost a three-game set to Syracuse was 2013. That team went to the playoffs.
So there is hope in Rochester.
First pitch Thursday from Gwinnett is 7:05 PM. Myles Jaye is the Wings probable starter.
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