By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
Kohl Stewart‘s introduction to Triple-A wasn’t necessarily one to fondly remember.
It was more like an indoctrination.
Three starts, 24 hits, 14 earned runs and some questions about what went wrong.
One of those starts came in August of last season, when he was promoted from Double-A Chattanooga to start at Louisville for the Rochester Red Wings. The other two came to start July against the International League’s best team, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
But the real Kohl Stewart may have started to take the mound in the past week. He allowed just one run in six innings on Saturday night at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
On Thursday night he was very good again, limiting the Norfolk Tides to three hits and one run over six innings. He walked two and struck out eight.
“I just think I seem to be executing a little bit better,” said Stewart, the fourth overall pick in the 2013 draft by the Minnesota Twins.
But because the Red Wings are virtually incapable of producing offense, he took the loss.
Norfolk swept the doubleheader at Frontier Field with a pair of 1-0 victories. In each game, the run scored on a sacrifice fly to left field.
And what was truly unique: the Wings suffered the rarest of rarities, a walk-off loss at home.
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Norfolk scored in the bottom of the eighth in Game 2, when they were the home team. The game had been rained out in Norfolk on June 3.
The Wing have been shut out for three consecutive games, the first time that has happened to the franchise since August 2002, the final year of the Baltimore Orioles affiliation.
“When you don’t score, you have zero chance to win,” Wings manager Joel Skinner mused afterward when his club fell to a season-worst six games under .500 (44-50, including an IL-worst 16-28 at home).
The Wings were held to three hits in the opener and two in the nightcap. That’s five hits — along with 15 strikeouts — in 15 innings.
At least the pitching has been good. D.J. Baxendale, Trevor May and Gabriel Moya allowed six hits in a great all-bullpen performance. Moya took the loss via the extra-inning-rule run rule.
Stewart, meanwhile, was often in command thanks in part to a sharp breaking ball. But what has really enabled him to start showing his potential has been adapting to his new one-seam fastball.
He made the switch from his two-seam fastball in spring training, even though the two-seam had been his bread-and-butter pitch.
“It was always my pitch, something I had confidence in,” he said.
But new Twins senior pitching analyst Josh Kalk, who Minnesota hired away from the Tampa Bay Rays, convinced Stewart to make the switch in grip at the start of spring training.
It took weeks, and months, to perfect it but now Stewart says it has helped.
“It eventually felt good coming out of my hand,” he said.
His command of the pitch has helped him make pitches when he was behind in counts, or enabled him to work ahead and get outs quickly to start innings. That’s the mantra on Wings staff, Early and Ahead.
He also has a little better feel of Triple-A now as well.
“I struggled in my first couple starts, maybe trying to overdo it or putting too much pressure on myself,” Stewart said. “Now I’m paying more attention to what guys are giving me and trying to read swings.”
If only he could swing the bat, too.
Notes: The addition of outfielder Jeremy Hazelbaker pushes to 32 the number of position players used by the Wings already. That’s a record for the Twins’ tenure as the parent team (since 2003) and could very well be a franchise record, since there was much less roster turnover in previous eras. The Wings have used 55 total players. They used 68 last year, including a record 41 pitchers.
Hazelbaker was acquired for cash from Tampa (via Durham), an indication the Wings may be shutting down Zack Granite for an extended period due to a right shoulder contusion.
Kennys Vargas hasn’t hit a home run at Frontier Field since May 25.
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