Wingnuts’ postseason drive remains stuck in neutral

The idea behind magic numbers in baseball is that they’re supposed to disappear.

The Wingnuts’ number to clinch an American Association playoff spot has remained mostly stagnant, and the division-clinching digit didn’t move on Tuesday night, when Wichita fell 7-2 to Amarillo at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

The Wingnuts remain four games ahead in the South over Joplin, which leads the wild-card race, but their division lead shrunk to three games over Laredo with six to play. Wichita needs a combination of three wins or Joplin losses to clinch a postseason bid.

Wichita has lost five of its last six games after reaching a season-best 20 games over .500 last week.

“Everybody wants to keep talking about the playoffs (in) every interview I do,” Wingnuts manager Kevin Hooper said. “As far as I know, we’re not in the playoffs yet. We need a little bigger, better sense of urgency. Pretty lackluster tonight, I felt.”

The Wingnuts were plagued on Tuesday by the problem that has shown up during most of their difficult stretches – an inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

A chance to break open the game in the first inning wasn’t realized as the Wingnuts loaded the bases but failed to score. Wichita didn’t just have Amarillo starter Matt Larkins on the ropes because of the quantity of baserunners, but because of how they reached.

Larkins walked two of the first four batters, hit one and allowed a single to Brent Clevlen. Leadoff hitter Nick Van Stratten was caught stealing, but the Wingnuts reorganized to load the bases with one out before they were felled by a strikeout and a groundout.

“We got the bases loaded, a chance to get some RBIs off of that and try to get (Larkins) out of there,” Van Stratten said. “We ended up having some at-bats that were not as good as we wanted. We ended up leaving the bases loaded, and that’s tough.

“We kind of stranded some guys on base. We’re going to have to figure that out when the playoffs come, because that’s big.”

The Wingnuts stranded 12 runners. The most painful failures were the inability to move T.J. Mittelstaedt after his leadoff double and leaving two on base after three straight one-out singles in the sixth. The hits produced a run but nothing more as Leo Vargas and Taylor Smart struck out in RBI situations.

A Van Stratten home run to lead off the bottom of the third put Wichita ahead 1-0, and at that point it seemed as if one run could be enough. Wingnuts starter Jason Van Skike, in desperate need of a positive outing, allowed one hit through four innings while striking out four.

Van Skike unraveled in the fifth as Amarillo built on its own leadoff double. Three hits and a walk followed, producing a four-run inning and an ultimately insurmountable lead. Van Skike allowed six runs – five earned – in 6 1/3 innings and his ERA jumped to 4.83.

“He looked great, then all of a sudden we hurt ourselves there in the fifth,” Hooper said. “I thought he was real crisp early on, I thought it was going to be one of those (good) nights, then they put a big crooked one up there.”

Amarillo added two runs in the seventh and one in the eighth, and the Wingnuts left runners on second and third in the seventh.

Wichita is looking for a balance between the sense of urgency and the unnecessary option of panicking in the midst of a losing skid when the Wingnuts still own a relatively comfortable postseason cushion.

“I’m not panicking by any means,” Hooper said. “If we just do our job and play the game we’re capable of playing, we will wrap this up. I’m just ready to get it over with sooner than later.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 11:24 PM with the headline "Wingnuts’ postseason drive remains stuck in neutral."