A promising start has turned into a lost season for the Cyclones, and it isn’t a secret that the offense is the reason that Brooklyn has to settle for trying to play spoiler during the final week instead of fighting for a playoff spot.
And while the failure may be for a lack of talent, it might also be for a lack of brains.
“Unfortunately, we have some guys on our team, they’ve just topped out,” skipper Tom Gamboa said. “And with some of them, the feedback I got from the coaches is that we’ve got a few guys that are so stubborn that they don’t want to make adjustments to instruction, which is tantamount to somebody beating their head against a wall and wondering why it hurts.”
Gamby has spent more than 40 years in professional baseball, but he says there’s always something new to experience.
“I gotta be honest, I’ve never been a part of any team as a player or a coach that has struggled all season long offensively like we have.” he said. “We try to just be positive but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The Cyclones jumped out to a 15–6 start despite the fact that Brooklyn was held to one or two runs in six of those wins, and won another game 3–2 in 12 innings.
“Our start was misleading. We were nine above, which was great, but that was all because of the pitching,” Gamby said. “We weren’t hitting then, but we were coming out on top. Once the pitching faltered just a little bit, once we gave up four, we couldn’t win.”
Even in July, Gamboa knew that they couldn’t maintain that record if the offense didn’t improve.
“I didn’t want to be a prophet, but that’s certainly what’s transpired.”
With the offense as bad as it is, it is incredible that the Cyclones are as good as they are, according to the team’s pitching coach.
“Dave LaRoche said to me ‘How did we win 30 games?,’ ” Gamby said. “As anemic as our offense is, it just shows how great our pitching was that we were able to win most of these low-scoring, close games.”
Gamboa added that he and coaches Yunir Garcia and Edgardo Alfonzo held meeting after meeting with the hitters.
“We’ve had so many clinics on hitting and on two-strike hitting, about choking up on the bat, about trying to go the other way,” Gamboa said.
One player who made adjustments is Alfredo Reyes, who is hitting .230 after Monday night’s game. Gamboa spoke about him a week before, when he was at .219 but improving.
“Alfredo was hitting .145 when he thought ‘This is crazy’ and started hitting the ball up the middle and opposite field and he’s at .219,” Gamboa said. “Is .219 good? No. But when you’ve come from .145 that’s the kind of development and progress that we’re looking for him to do.”
Gamby bleeds Dodger blue
Brooklyn may not experience playoff baseball in 2015, but the team honored the World Series champion Dodgers of 1955. A lot has been written about the team leaving Brooklyn for the West Coast after 1957, but Gamboa experienced it from the other side as a kid in California who became a Dodger fan.
“Die-hard from the first year when they came out in ’58.”
Vin Scully, who started announcing for the Dodgers when the team was still in Brooklyn, announced that he will return for the 2016 season. The iconic broadcaster played a big part in Gamboa’s childhood.
“I didn’t know anything about Brooklyn. In ’58 I was 10. That was the first year I played baseball, so I didn’t know,” the baseball lifer said. “I knew they came from Brooklyn but I didn’t know anything about their history. I knew everything about it from L.A. because everyone in L.A. fell in love with Vin Scully and he painted you a good picture when you listened on your transistor radio because none of the games were on TV.”
