The All-Star break was a relief for the 25–30 Brooklyn Cyclones, which lost the final six games before the break, falling from first to worst in the McNamara Division, and putting the team’s record of never having a sub-.500 season in its history in jeopardy.
And Manager Tom Gamboa knows exactly where to place the blame: on his team’s punchless line-up.
“We’re struggling for a leadoff hitter, a three-hole hitter, a four-hole,” the skipper said. “The holes in the dam are beyond fixable.”
The numbers on offense might be explainable if the Cyclones were facing Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Felix Hernandez on a nightly basis. Instead a large number of pitchers will likely not make it to the major leagues.
“I’m just not impressed with the pitching I’m seeing against us,” Gamboa said. “I wish we were facing prospects. I could say to the guys, ‘Hey, you faced a Major League pitcher tonight.’ But on most nights that’s not the case.”
There are a number of hitters who are swinging for home runs when a single the other way would be enough. For instance, the Gamby doesn’t understand why light-hitting Alfredo Reyes tries to blast pitches over the walls of MCU Park.
“He actually thinks he can hit the ball out of the ballpark, which is just crazy,” the field general said. “He couldn’t hit the ball out of the ballpark if he stood at second base with a fungo.”
However, Gamby is pleased with Reyes’s defense, which was lousy at the beginning of the season.
“I think the people are seeing Alfredo Reyes play phenomenal shortstop. I mean night in and night out,” he said. “To his credit, for a solid month now, he’s making all the plays every which way, the slow hit ball, to his left, to his right. And of course he’s got a shotgun for an arm. I hope the people are having fun watching him play as much as we are.”
Fourth-round pick David Thompson was one of the nation’s leading power hitters at Miami but he did something last week that came as a surprise to Gamboa.
“We were shocked to see him get a walk,” he said. “Nobody in the dugout could remember the last time David Thompson got a base on balls. We say that kiddingly because he’s a first-year guy and for whatever reason he refuses to take walks. He wants to swing at everything and his average is showing him that that’s just not possible. I think he’s going to be a fine player once he gets his feet on the ground and learns the strike zone.”
How bad has the Cyclones offense been? Some of the hitters might need to take the mound to stay around. Gamboa has used Pedro Perez and Zach Mathieu as pitchers.
“On the last road trip, with some of the front office people in, we needed a position player to pitch and I deliberately had him throw so that they could see Pedro to try to plant the seed of maybe a conversion with him, because he does have a good arm.”
The last 20 games will be an interesting test for the Cyclones. Can they go from worst to first and win the McNamara Division? Or will they finish with the first losing record in team history? Or both?
Of course, there were some bright spots in the first half of the season, and three of them represented the squad at this year’s big game in Aberdeen. Pitchers Gaby Almonte and Alex Palsha were selected along with second baseman Vinny Siena, and the team’s skipper couldn’t be happier for them.
“They picked the right guys,” Tom Gamboa said. “Siena, for a solid five weeks hit .340. He leveled off a little bit but he’s had a fine year overall defensively and with the bat.”
Palsha was a no-brainer, converting his first 11 save chances without giving up a run, and Almonte leads the team with six wins.
After a 15–6 start, Brooklyn lost 24 of its next 34. Still, the Clones are only three and a half games behind the Evil Empire of the New York-Penn League, the Staten Island Yankees, who sit in first place at press time.
“There’s so much parity in the league,” said Gamboa. “I think it looks like it’s going to go to the last week of this thing to see who comes out on top.”
The Cyclones will finish the season against the hated Staten Island Yankees.
“I just noticed the other day that we play the last three games at home against Staten Island and it’d be exciting for everybody if it came down to that.”
It won’t be exciting if the Cyclones are eliminated by then, and the team won’t be in contention if the bats don’t wake up in the final 20 games.
Just like Gamby says.
