BY DAN GLICKMAN
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – There’s good news and bad news for the Rochester Red Wings.
The good news for the Rochester Red Wings is obvious: they won their home series against the St. Paul Saints, 4-3, despite missing top prospect James Wood due to injury. They are three games over .500, and the weather was nice for much of the homestand, bringing in some of the biggest crowds of the year so far during the weekend.
The bad news is even more obvious, though: the team lost on Sunday in the series finale, 8-1, unable to take advantage of offensive opportunities while the Saints did just that.
Rochester (29-26, 4.5 out of first in IL East, 10 out of first in overall first half standings) used speed to pull ahead in the bottom of the first. Saints pitcher Randy Dobnak, a former Red Wing with 33 MLB games, struggled with command, walking Darren Baker to start the bottom of the first. The speedster promptly stole second for his 18th stolen bag of the season before Dobnak walked Jackson Cluff. With first baseman Juan Yepez at the plate, the steal sign stayed up: Baker and Cluff both took off on a successful double steal. The successful swipe- Baker’s 19th (tied for fourth in the International League) and Cluff’s fourth- put two men in scoring position with no outs.
Yepez grounded out, but scored Baker on the play to give the Red Wings the 1-0 lead. Rochester couldn’t capitalize anymore, however. Travis Blankenhorn drew a walk before an inning-ending double-play squashed the would-be big inning. It would haunt the team the rest of the way.
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“We had their guy on the ropes in the first,” said Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy. “We took our walks, but obviously we hit that double play. It killed that momentum, let him [get] settle[d] in, and we didn’t.”
The Wings continued to threaten in the coming innings. They had doubles to put men in scoring position in both the second and fourth. Baker walked and then stole his third base of the game (a career high) and 20th of the season (tying him for second in the league) with two outs in the fifth. The first two men reached in the sixth. Each time, however, the Red Wings were unable to get those runners home. The team ultimately finished the game 0-11 with runners in scoring position and left eight on base, while Dobnak recovered from his early struggles to go six innings while allowing three hits.
“Offensively, we were a little dead,” said LeCroy. “We only had four hits [overall]. I thought the way we started it was going to be a big inning there, but we didn’t get it done.”
St. Paul, meanwhile, did damage to Wings pitching, outhitting the home team 12-4. The most damage happened in in the fourth, as two straight Saints were hit by Joan Adon pitches before scoring on a one-out Alex Isola double to put St. Paul ahead, 2-1. An error extended the inning before Diego Castillo drove in two more with a two-out single to extend the Saints lead to four.
The Saints added another run in the fifth, put up two in the seventh on a Matt Wallner home run, and then brought in a final run in the eighth on a Wallner double to make it 8-1.
Despite the final loss, however, the Red Wings have positives as they finish their home stand. They not only won the home series with St. Paul, 4-3, they also took the overall season series, 7-5. They had a winning record in May, 16-13, and have won three series straight. With a series against a sub-.500 Worcester club coming up and then pivotal series against Scranton and Syracuse- who both are ahead of Rochester in the standings- LeCroy believes the team could make some noise.
“We battled and won this series,” said LeCroy. “I’m proud of the guys, the offense was good until today. We just gotta keep plugging along.”
“The goal of every series is to win every series.”
That next series starts Tuesday at the Worcester Red Sox. The Red Wings send righty Spenser Watkins (1-2, 5.02) to the mound against Worcester right-hander Richard Fitts (4-1, 3.72). First pitch is 6:45 P.M.
This was a wasted opportunity to take the series 5-2. Usually the hitters don’t let the team down. However the pitching is another story, as it has been all season. Not lost on us is that St Paul scored 16 runs in the final two games, which is completely unsatisfactory.That the Wings won one of those games was due to their bats.
Yes this team may be capable of making some noise as the Skipper suggests, but when the pitching staff is still carrying two pitchers with ERA’s north of 10.00 and they are out there regularly, the noise may not be too pleasant.
I’d love to see how good these guys might be if the Gnats presented them with a few pitchers who could get men out. The lineup is as strong a one as I can recall in recent years. Conversely I couldn’t imagine a pitching staff worse than the one we suffered through in 2023.
But here we are. Our team has not been particularly competitive very often over the past 20 years, so I think we have a right to complain. When will it be our turn?
And so we soldier on.