With the most favorable section of their schedule over with to start the second half of Texas League play, the Amarillo Sod Poodles are probably taking the glass-half-full approach to the results.
The Sod Poodles head into this week’s four-day all-star break after playing 15 of their first 18 games at Hodgetown to open the second half of their TL schedule. Last week’s six home games against the Frisco RoughRiders could have been better, but it also could have definitely been worse.
In what was the only truly noncompetitive game of the series, the Soddies fell behind Frisco early and never recovered, losing Sunday’s series finale 9-1 and settling for a series split. The good news was that at the end of the day, the Sod Poodles were 10-8 heading into the break, tied with San Antonio atop the Texas League South.
Prior to Sunday, the Soddies had given the Hodgetown faithful their money’s worth, at least in their three wins, which included two walk-off wins and one decided by an eighth-inning home run. The series opened with a loss in the 10th inning, making it arguably the most entertaining Hodgetown series of the season thus far.
“I told the guys that every day is different,” Sod Poodles manager Javier Colina said. “There were a couple of walk-offs and we’ve been playing well the past couple of days. Today it never went our way but that’s baseball and we’ve got to move forward. Now it’s time to reset the next three or four days.”
There was plenty for Colina, his players and the Sod Poodles fans to like over the previous six days at Hodgetown. All three phases of the game had some good moments, and there was plenty of drama for fans looking for that sort of thing.
The only real disappointment for the Soddies came in Sunday’s result, which was on the heels of Saturday’s thrilling 5-3 victory. That came thanks to a walk-off two-run homer by Jean Walters with one out in the bottom of the ninth.
Sunday’s game was fairly anticlimactic on a day where the Sod Poodles were denied a series victory. Sod Poodles right-hander Alec Baker, making his second start of the week, didn’t last past three innings, as Frisco’s first five hitters reached in the fourth, four via base hits, and the RoughRiders took an 8-0 lead.
At the plate, the Soddies had just as tough a time against Frisco starter Trey Supak, who in six innings struck out seven, walked only one and gave up three singles. Most telling for the Sod Poodles was that their top two hitters in the order, the usually productive Kristian Robinson and Tommy Troy, combined to go 0-for-9.
“When you face a good pitcher who does what he’s supposed to, it doesn’t matter how good you are as a hitting team, you have to take your hat off to them,” Colina said. “(Supak) executed a perfect game.”
The Sod Poodles avoided a shutout with a two-out rally in the eighth, as Ryan Waldschmidt doubled and scored on Manuel Pena’s single for their only run.
It was a letdown after Saturday’s dramatic finish. The Sod Poodles entered bottom of the ninth tied at 3-3, when with one out Caleb Roberts came up to face Josh Mollerus.
Roberts, who has a history of game-winning hits over 2 ½ years in Amarillo, lined a pitch down the right field line which barely went foul, giving Mollerus and Frisco a reprieve. However, Roberts ended up walking on five pitches.
That brought up Walters, who one pitch later, picked a great time to hit his first homer of the season, lofting it well over the right field fence to end the game.
“Everybody dreams about getting a homer and walking it off,” said Walters, a Cuban infielder who was 0-for-3 on the night prior to his homer. “It was see the ball, hit the ball. I was just watching (Roberts’) at-bat because he’s one of the best hitters I’ve seen and when he almost hit it out I said ‘It’s over.'”
As exciting as that win was, it wasn’t the most improbable walk-off win of the week for the Sod Poodles. That came Thursday night, when they rallied from a nine-run deficit for a 13-12 win in 11 innings.
Trailing 11-2 after the RoughRiders scored four runs in the top of the eighth, the Soddies scored five in the bottom of the inning, starting with Waldschmidt’s two-run triple. They tied it at 11 in the bottom of the ninth when Ivan Melendez had a two-run single and Gavin Conticello singled home a run.
The teams scored a run each in the 10th before the Sod Poodles won it in the 11th on Robinson’s RBI single.
Saturday’s win guaranteed that the Sod Poodles would do no worse than split the series with Frisco and have no worse than a share of the division lead by the end of the weekend. Colina insists it’s too early in the second half of the season to look too hard and the standings.
“To be honest, we don’t worry about that,” Colina said. “If we continue to play good baseball we’ll be on top no matter what at the end of this half. We just keep pushing in the right direction and helping each other and hope everybody stays healthy.”
Melendez makes his mark
In the midst of an exciting week, it could almost be forgotten that the Sod Poodles had a new all-time home run king after Wednesday night, and it directly led to another victory.
With two outs and two one trailing by a run in the bottom of the eighth, Melendez stepped to the plate tied with Tim Tawa for the franchise’s career homer lead with 48. Melendez ended that tie by blasting a three-run shot deep to right center which bounced off the top of the fence, not only giving him a Sod Poodles record, but his team an eventual 5-3 victory.
“For me it was about winning the game more importantly,” Melendez said. “I’m not super selfish about individual stats. I was up to bat in a big moment in a big game. I wasn’t thinking about a franchise record.”
Melendez wasn’t sure he had one when he hit the ball, as it bounced off the top of the fence and ended up back on the field. He slid head-first into third thinking he had a shot at a triple, not seeing that umpires had already signaled that he’d hit a home run.
It was the only ball Melendez hit out of the infield all night, as he struck out his first two at-bats and popped up to short. At the end of the game, he had some dirt on his jersey as a result of his slide into third.
“I didn’t know it was a home run,” Melendez said. “I never saw a signal so I thought I had a three-bagger. I was trying to get dirty because I hadn’t done anything leading up to that point.”
Alvarez has big week in relief
The bullpen has been a strong point for the Sod Poodles all season and that was proven again last week, as nobody was more important to the pitching staff than Jhosmer Alvarez.
In Wednesday’s game, Alvarez relieved starter Jonatan Bernal, who threw six solid innings but nonetheless left with the Soddies trailing 3-2. Alvarez pitched two scoreless innings, giving up only a one-out single in the eighth, holding the RoughRiders at bay until Melendez hit the go-ahead homer. Zane Russell pitched a perfect ninth to earn the save.
Saturday night, Alvarez again came on in the seventh after another strong starting performance from Jose Cabrera, who gave up three runs (one unearned) on five hits with the score tied 3-3. Alvarez pitched the final three innings, and although he walked the first two batters in the eighth, he threw a perfect ninth to set up Walters for the heroics.
The two wins and five scoreless innings improved Alvarez to 4-2 on the season.
“He’s successful with where he’s at right now so we’re not going to change our plan,” Colina said of Alvarez. “When the players are doing good in the spots they’re supposed to there’s no reason to change. It’s a game of adjustments. We know he can throw hard but sometimes it’s not about throwing hard, it’s about fastball command and working ahead in counts.”
Homer, sweet homer
Wednesday’s game might have been the most “Hodgetownish” game of the series. Although the eight runs hardly indicate a slugfest, it was the way they came which seemed typical of the hitter-friendly park.
All of the runs came via the homer. Frisco’s Abimelec Ortiz got his team on the board with a two-run homer to right off Bernal in the fourth, then the Sod Poodles tied it in the fifth on Robinson’s two-run homer to left.
Frisco reclaimed the lead with a solo shot to left by Cam Cauley which led off the sixth, which held up until Melendez hit his record-setter in the eighth.
Groover’s bright future
Conspicuous by his absence to to end the Soddies homestand was Soddies third baseman LuJames Groover. The reason Groover’s team-leading .312 batting average, 10 homers and 37 RBIs wasn’t in the lineup was because he was in Atlanta for the Futures Game to kick off the All-Star week festivities, playing for the National League squad as an Arizona Diamondbacks representative.
Back in his native Georgia, Groover was right at home and showed that he could be moving up very soon. Groover went 2-for-2 at the plate and scored a run as part of a four-run third inning which provided all the NL’s offense in a 4-2 victory.
Also representing the Diamondbacks was centerfielder Slade Caldwell, the organization’s No. 2 prospect playing at Class A Hillsboro and who could be in Amarillo next season. Caldwell made a nice running catch in center for the final out of the game to preserve the NL’s victory.
On the road for a bit
After four days off, the Sod Poodles return to action for a rare three-game series at San Antonio starting Friday. With a short series with an odd number of games, the winner will emerge with sole possession of the TL South lead at the end of next weekend.
The Soddies will stay on the road for a more “conventional” series the next week with six games at Corpus Christi before returning home July 29 to start a six-game series against Wichita at Hodgetown.