After a loss earlier in the month, Eugene Emeralds manager Danny Sheaffer slowly shook his head in his office and seemed puzzled at his team’s play.
“We just haven’t been playing A-B-C baseball,” Sheaffer said back then.
Almost two weeks have passed since that loss and the Emeralds are getting used to playing the type of baseball that awards you with three different letters in the alphabet.
Those letters would, of course, be W, I and N.
Winning is contagious, and the more you win the more you want to avoid losing.
“It’s a pretty good feeling,” right fielder Nic Jackson said. “We’re a lot better of a team than we’ve been showing, and it’s starting to come together for ourselves.”
In the ninth inning on Sunday, however, the visiting Spokane Indians were threatening to steal the win. The Indians trailed 3-2, but had two men on and only one out.
Sheaffer then brought in relief pitcher Eric Albright, who proceeded to record two strikeouts to preserve the win and give his team its fifth win in six games.
At the exact moment when Albright’s final pitch found catcher Ryan Jorgensen’s mitt, Eugene general manager Bob Beban pumped his fist in celebration.
Beban’s enthusiasm was echoed by the 3,383 fans who packed Civic Stadium for the season’s first day game amid the 90-degree weather.
The win pushed the Ems (14-12) into sole possession of first place in the South Division of the Northwest League.
The Ems extended their first-place standing even more so last night when they beat the division rival Portland Rockies 8-3 on Monday night in Portland’s Historic Civic Stadium to move one-and-a-half games ahead of the Rockies. The two teams close out the three-game set with games tonight and Wednesday.
This is the first time that the Ems and Rockies have met this season and both know the importance of setting the tone for the rest of the season.
“This is going to be a big series,” said second-baseman Blake Blasi after Sunday’s win. “We just have to go in there and keep the consistency from our pitchers and hopefully scratch out some runs here and there and get some wins.”
Scratching out runs has been getting the job done for the Ems as of late.
In the fourth-inning of Sunday’s game, left-fielder Pete Graham laced a double down the left-field line with no outs. With the score tied up at 2, Sheaffer didn’t want to take any chances so he made sure to get his runner home.
He had Dionnar Martinez lay down a sacrifice bunt, moving Graham to third.
Then Blasi hit a fly ball right at Spokane right fielder Ben Cordova, who caught it and delivered a perfect strike to home that beat out the incoming Graham, who had tagged up from third.
But Spokane catcher Scott Walter hesitated and then got drilled by a charging Graham, who knocked the ball out of Walter’s glove.
Hard-nosed baseball at its best.
It also would be the last run that the Ems pitchers would need. Wilton Chavez, Scott Tranchina and Albright combined to hold the Indians scoreless in eight of the nine innings.
Chavez overcame early struggles to pick up his fourth win in as many games.
“He gave us what we expected today,” Sheaffer said. “He got us late in the game with a lead, and we weren’t going to give him a chance to lose the game. Tranchina and Albright then did a great job.”
One could also credit Sunday’s win to the defensive play of Jackson. In the top of the fourth inning, the Indians had runners on second and third when Darren Fenster hit a tailing fly ball near the right field line. Jackson hustled over and snagged it to end the inning.
Then in the top of the seventh, Jackson performed a rare double play when he caught Marco Cunningham’s fly ball and then gunned down Fenster at third with a perfect throw.
“Yeah, that was a big out,” Sheaffer said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Now the Ems find themselves in the middle of a pennant race with every series gaining importance along the way.
“You can’t look beyond any team right now,” Sheaffer said. “Shoot, we’ve only got six weeks left, so it’s more or less September to us.”
Notes: Closing pitcher Rich Barker completed his month long rehabilitation assignment with the Emeralds and was sent back to AAA Iowa of the Pacific Coast League. Barker, who spent some time with the Chicago Cubs last season, finished his Ems campaign with a 3.27 ERA and a league-leading four saves in 11 innings of work.
The Emeralds also promoted pitcher Frangil Cordero to Lansing of the Midwest League. Cordero was 1-1 with a 2.96 ERA in his 24.1 innings of work.