Strong Effort Helps Goldeyes over RailCats
July 15, 2016 - American Association (AA)
Winnipeg Goldeyes News Release
WINNIPEG, MB - The Winnipeg Goldeyes (29-25) beat the Gary SouthShore RailCats 9-5 at Shaw Park on Friday night.
The Goldeyes have won eight of their last 11 games, and Friday's win moves the club four games above .500 for the first time this season.
The Goldeyes scored early and often against RailCats' starter and knuckleballer Zach Staniewicz. Three straight walks in the opening inning allowed the Goldeyes to load the bases with no outs. Staniewicz nearly escaped the jam before David Rohm worked out a two-out walk to force in Adam Heisler with the game's first run. Casio Grider followed with an RBI single on a line drive to left.
"It's not an easy adjustment (against a knuckleballer)," said Goldeyes' manager Rick Forney . "Obviously, you don't see knuckleballers very often, if you see one at all in your career. I think the biggest adjustment you need to make is (to) stay patient and wait for him to throw strikes and be willing to see a couple of them your first at bat, because it's not something that you see very often.
"Sometimes it's very difficult to be patient when someone's throwing you 60 mile-an-hour knuckleballs and some of them appear to be in the top of the strike zone. You see it real good, and you want to swing, but I thought the approach was very, very good today. When you're willing to take that free pass, as I've been saying throughout the whole season, our offence is kind of driven by us taking walks. We're a good base running team. We were taking a free pass, whether it was a walk or a hit by pitch today, and turning it into a stolen base situation where we're immediately in scoring position. Offensively, guys did a real good job."
The RailCats cut the lead to 2-1 in the top of the second. Frank Martinez tripled down the right field line with one out and scored on Jeremy Hamilton's groundout to second.
Winnipeg answered back in the bottom of the second inning when Heisler crushed a two-out, solo home run to right-centre field.
The Goldeyes broke the game open with a four-run bottom of the third. Singles from Willie Cabrera and Jacob Rogers bookended a Reggie Abercrombie hit batsmen to load the bases with no outs. Cabrera scored on a sacrifice fly to deep left from Rohm. Two batters later, Ridge Hoopii-Haslam lined a three-run home run to left to extend the lead to 7-1. Winnipeg has homered 18 times in the last eight games, while scoring 69 runs during that same stretch.
"He's (Hoopii-Haslam) a good player," said Forney. "He really is. Just unfortunately, he's on a team full of veteran players that have been around the;
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