Lee Orr paid close attention to how Bowling Green closer Austin Hubbard pitched Fort Wayne teammate Mike Gallic.The TinCaps trailed the Hot Rods by a run in the ninth May 20 at Parkview Field.
A covey of dying quail, and the pennant race that refuses to die lives on.
Visiting Lansing pieced together four runs in the first inning on three base hits that, taken together, might not have stretched to the end of the block, and another crucial “W” went flying off with the angels Tuesday for the Fort Wayne TinCaps.
For the third straight night, they couldn’t stitch together a rally, this time out of 10 hits, and the Lugnuts (35-29) went on to win for the third straight time, 5-1. With West Michigan blowing a 2-0 lead and losing 3-2 to Dayton in 10 innings, that left the TinCaps (35-29) still just a game up in the race for the final playoff spot with six games to play.
“When it rains, it kind of pours,” TinCaps manager Shawn Wooten said. “We’ve got six games left, and we’ll see where we go.”
Where they did not go Tuesday was home, at least often enough. Four times the TinCaps put the leadoff runner on base – three times in the last four innings – and only once, in the sixth, did they get anything out of it. Luis Domoromo led off that inning with a double and Connor Powers and Rocky Gale followed with singles to chase him home – but after that, silence.
Mike Gallic flied out to right for one out. B.J. Guinn flied out to left for two outs. And Chris Bisson ended the chance with a strikeout.
The TinCaps also put the leadoff man on in the seventh and eighth, but Domoromo hit into an inning-ending double play in the seventh, and Gale grounded into a 4-6-3 double-dip after Powers led off the eighth with a single to essentially quash that threat.
“That’s kind of how it’s been, in a sense,” Wooten said. “We’ve been swinging the bat good in this series. We just haven’t had a lot of results. That’s just baseball. That’s how it works.”
Lansing, meanwhile, drew a pair of walks from TinCaps starter Dennis O’Grady in the first and did the rest of the damage with nothing terribly damaging: Two high-hopping infield singles and Matt Nuzzo’s lazy bases-loaded fly to shallow right, which fell in front of Rymer Liriano and then got by him to score all three baserunners.
After that, O’Grady and reliever Deiber Sanchez retired 18 of the next 21 Lugnuts.
“Give a lot of credit to (Lansing), they’re making the plays when they have to,” Wooten said. “They’re getting the hits when they have to in key situations. They’ve got a good team, and that’s why they’re in the playoffs and we’re kind of running through a stretch where we’re not playing our best baseball when we need to.”
Second baseman Cory Spangenberg, who singled twice, was a bit more succinct.
“Baseball is a frustrating sport,” he said. “We’ve had a tough three games, and the breaks just aren’t going our way right now. We’ve just got to keep on playing the game hard, and hopefully the breaks, the bloopers, will go our way.”
