The young Eugene Emeralds are learning an important lesson one week into the 2000 season.
Baseball is a day-to-day game.
One day you can totally dominate a team — as the Emeralds (3-4) did to the Yakima Bears on Sunday evening, winning 9-3 in its home opener.
And then the next, you can commit six errors and fall to the same team by a count of 5-4, as the Ems did on Monday night.
The loss prevented Eugene from going over the .500 mark this late in the season for the first time since 1996, and improved Yakima to 4-3.
“The hard part about this is that these kids think we expect them to be perfect,” manager Danny Sheaffer said. “And we don’t.”
Sheaffer has been around the game long enough to know that one loss will not ruin a season, and said he sees this as an important part of their maturity as players.
“Hey, guys are going to make mistakes,” Sheaffer said. “We’ve got to bounce back from that. It’s all a part of the learning and part of the development of these players.”
But even with having more errors than runs, the Ems still gave themselves a chance to win in the ninth, trailing 5-3.
Ems reliever Scott Tranchina came on in the ninth and continued his stellar pitching thus far in the season by shutting down the Bears one-two-three — all strikeouts.
Things didn’t start off well in the bottom of the ninth as Ems right fielder Nic Jackson went down on strikes. But catcher Yoon-Min Kweon woke up the faithful 2,105 fans on hand by fouling off two pitches and then earning a base on balls. The speedy Sam Cooper immediately pinch ran for Kweon.
Blair Barbier, who had pinch hit for Jeff Felker earlier in the game, proceeded to hit a lazy fly ball that appeared to be the inning’s second out. But Yakima’s Candido Martinez lost it in the Civic Stadium lights, putting Cooper at second and Barbier at first.
Then the crowd was given even more hope of a comeback when Yakima pitcher Gregory Bauer’s wild pitch put runners at first and third with only one out. Brandon Sing lined one to center, but this time Martinez saw it all the way through and caught it. Cooper did score on the sacrifice fly to cut the lead to one, but Peter Graham ended the rally, and game, when he struck out.
Sheaffer, though, said he would take that scenario any day.
“I’d like to have the tying run on base every night in the ninth inning,” Sheaffer said. “We’d come out on top.”
Perhaps the biggest positive out of Monday’s loss was the pitching of Frangil Cordero. The left hander struck out three and walked one in his five innings of work. Only one of the three runs he gave up was earned — a Kevin Covington blast in the second inning that was ruled a home run, but protested by Sheaffer who believed it to have bounced off the wall and over.
“It clearly hit the front fence and I think the umpires should just let the kids play and not make questionable calls,” Sheaffer said. “But Cordero did a tremendous job and kept us in the game.”
The Emeralds locker room was full of solemn faces afterward, but even in a losing effort the players were acknowledged by the fans. As the players were leaving the stadium they were stopped by adoring children and signed plenty of autographs.
A child was heard telling a player, “Last night you guys were awesome and tomorrow you will be, too. Tonight was just a bummer.”
Indeed the 5-4 loss did nothing to diminish the jubilant feeling of Sunday night’s 9-3 win in front of a near sellout crowd of 5,991.
In the game, the Ems batted around and got terrific pitching from Wilton Chavez, who only gave up one run, three hits and recorded six strikeouts in six innings of solid work.
Chavez was named Northwest League Pitcher of the Week as his record stands at 2-0 and ERA at a blistering 0.00. He shut down the Spokane Indians in the season opener on June 20.
“It makes my job easy as a manager when I got pitching like that,” Sheaffer said. “He pitches on emotion and is fun to watch.”
In Sunday’s win Michael Mallory, Sing, Kweon and Felker each had two hits for the Ems. Sing and Mallory had the most crowd-pleasing hits of the night as both drove pitches over the left-field fence.
“It felt nice to hear the crowd cheer like that after my hit,” said Mallory after Sunday’s win. “They get behind the team real well here and that picks us up.”
Felker, who has made some impressive defensive plays at first in the last couple of nights, also was singing the crowd’s praise.
“Oh, it’s great,” said Felker who went 2-for-5 with a double and single on Sunday. “This is a very knowledgeable crowd and they make for a great atmosphere for Single-A baseball.”
Ems second basemen Blake Blasi came down to earth a bit on Monday night after getting off to a sizzling start in the club’s first six games. Blasi noted last year’s disappointing year for the Ems and seems eager to turn things around for the people of Eugene.
“I heard we didn’t have that good a year last year and you’re never sure how the crowd is going to react to that,” said Blasi, who before Monday’s game was batting a league-leading .520. “So you want to come out and play hard and keep them all coming out and watching.”
The Ems seem refreshed to finally be home after playing the first five games on the road — a period in which they went 2-3 against the Spokane Indians.
“It was good for us to get on the road and play some games together,” Felker said.
“But it’s even better to have a place to call our own and settle into a nice routine.”
In the course of the 76 game season, Emerald players and fans hope that routine turns out to be a winning routine.