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Opening night(mare)
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A crowd of Mahoning Valley Scrappers’ fans streams through the gates of Eastwood Field in Niles for the team’s home opener against the Auburn Doubledays of Auburn, N.Y.
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Scrappers pitcher J.D. Goryl delivers a pitch during the fourth inning of Monday’s game against Auburn at Eastwood Field.
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Before the start of Monday’s home-opener game at Eastwood Field in Niles, Mahoning Valley Scrappers player Takafumi Nakamura, left, signs a baseball ball for fans Joe Homa, 11, center, and Tyler Longwell, 13, both of Warren. The Scrappers opened their 11th season as a Minor League affi liate of the Cleveland Indians.
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Fans watch the Mahoning Valley Scrappers’ home opener against Auburn on Monday night at Eastwood Field.
Doubledays pound Scrappers 12-0 at Eastwood Field
By JON MOFFETT
NILES
Manager Travis Fryman said it’ll take a few weeks before he has a feel for his players and their strengths.
Until then, it’s a learning process every night.
Monday’s lesson was about how important pitching is to a club. Casey Gaynor didn’t exactly have the first professional start he had hoped for.
The first-year Mahoning Valley Scrapper made his minor-league debut in front of 5,099 at Eastwood Field for the home opener. Unfortunately, the right-hander’s night didn’t last very long.
Gaynor, a product of Rutgers University, looked sharp at the start. He struck out the first three batters and gained momentum for the Scrappers (2-2) early. But the Auburn Doubledays caught up with Gaynor, and walked off the field with a 12-0 victory.
“I just tell them they’re going to have some games like that, and tomorrow is a new day,” Fryman said. “That’s one of the best things about professional baseball, you get to come back and do it again tomorrow.”
Gaynor needed 46 pitches to get out of his two innings. But the Doubledays (2-2) needed only one of those throws to take the air out of the crow and Gaynor out of the picture.
With two outs and the bases loaded in the top of the second, and already down 2-0, Gaynor threw a ball right over the plate to Carlos Perez. Perez turned on the ball and sent it sailing over the left-field fence. Gaynor got the next batter to ground out to end his night.
Gaynor finished allowing seven runs on four hits. He struck out four and walked three.
“Again, we’re learning what we have with our guys here,” Fryman said. “The first time through we’re just going to get a good look at them.”
While Gaynor struggled on the hill, Auburn’s Sam Strickland looked right at home.
The 6-foot-5 southpaw dominated the Mahoning Valley hitters. The Scrappers mustered five total hits. Strickland scattered four of them in his six innings.
The Doubleday defense also stepped its game up. The team didn’t commit an error and turned a double play. Catcher Jack Murphy also threw a runner out on a ball in the dirt.
Left fielder Chase Burnette broke for third on the pitch, but Murphy was able to scoop it up and fire it over. Burnette’s cleat and the ball arrived in Randy Schwartz’s glove at the same time.
While the Scrappers offense hardly sizzled against the Doubledays, Burnette was able to muster two of the teams hits, including a double.
The double was the Scrappers’ only extra-base hit.
Burnette said he and his teammates didn’t do enough to respond to the seven-run inning that signaled Gaynor’s quick departure.
“The second inning was rough, and some bad things happened. They got seven runs and that kind of put us down,” he said. “But we have to do a lot better of a job responding to that.”
Three Scrappers reached on infield singles. The only other hit to leave the dirt was a single by leadoff man Dan DeGeorge.
Fryman said he wasn’t worried about the loss and didn’t buy into the thought of an offensive slump.
“Four games doesn’t constitute as a slump,” he said.
Fryman added that the team is still feeling its way around the lineup and expects a few bumps in the road. He said it usually takes players “about three weeks” to get a real feel and show what they can do.
But that doesn’t give the Scrappers a free pass.
“We played probably as good as you can play on Sunday [against Jamestown] and probably as poorly as you can play today,” he said. “But that’s just the game.”
The Scrappers and Doubledays will play the second of their three-game series tonight at Eastwood Field. The first pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.
Scrappers notebook | From Eastwood Field
Home sweet home: The Mahoning Valley Scrappers opened their home season in front of 5,099 fans. Though the number is somewhat short of the record 7,726 set in 1999, manager Travis Fryman said its always nice to play in front of such an energetic group. “It’s always tremendous,” he said. “In the three years I’ve been here, this has been a nice place to play. We’ve always had nice fan support.” He said the confines of Eastwood Fields are “a great place for your first introduction into professional baseball.”
Hit the showers: Prior to the first pitch being thrown, the sprinkler system in front of the visitors’ dugout mysteriously turned on and soaked a few of the Auburn Doubledays. The drizzle took several minutes to corral, and only happened on the opposition’s side of the field. Scrappers personnel laughed at the idea of sabotage and insisted the problem was coincidental.
How much wood: Fryman didn’t balk when asked if using a wooden bat, as opposed to aluminum, added to his team’s offensive funk. “That process will be taking place all summer,” he said. “It’s very difficult to learn.” He added that the bat isn’t as much to blame as the approach and the swing. “What we call a swing plane tends to be more uphill which you can get away with when you use an aluminum bat,” he said. “They’ll spend most of the summer learning how to swing a wood bat and learning how to improve their swing plane.” One of his players, Chase Burnette, said the transition is one that takes some getting used to. “There is a lot smaller of a sweet spot on a wood bat ... So there is a little bit of adjusting to it,” Burnette said. “But you just have to be more focused and square the ball up more.”
Jon Moffett