Wingnuts pick apart Kansas City

The Wingnuts haven’t hit a home run in their last seven games. They’re not waiting for one, either.

Wichita doesn’t possess the personnel for its offense to hinge on homers. With a balanced lineup stocked with high-average, patient hitters, the Wingnuts’ best-case scenario looks a lot like what they did on Sunday.

Their two biggest innings featured nothing but singles, and just one of the Wingnuts’ 14 hits went for extra bases in a 10-3 win over Kansas City at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

The Wingnuts had six singles during a four-run second inning and five singles when they scored four in the eighth. T.J. Mittelstaedt and Matt Padgett, who had Wichita’s only double, collected three hits apiece. Mittelstaedt hit two home runs at Amarillo last Sunday, but the Wingnuts haven’t hit one since.

“That’s what we’re capable of doing,” Wingnuts manager Kevin Hooper said. “…A lot of singles, a lot of hard contact. We’re not a home run-hitting team. We need to get the ball out of the air, especially here on the turf. Hard line drives, hard groundballs, that’s what (hitting coach Jose Amado) and I keep preaching.”

The Wingnuts have speed throughout the lineup, especially with the recent additions of Harrison Kain and Starlin Rodriguez. From the No. 9 spot, Kain provides the same contact ability and strong baserunning as Jayce Ray did, which allows Ray to move to the leadoff spot to be a catalyst as a stolen-base threat.

Rodriguez, along with Joash Brodin, are the rare middle-of-the-order hitters who can take extra bases and hit enough to be trusted in RBI situations. Rodriguez, who had three hits on Sunday, scored from first on Padgett’s double in the third and from second on John Nester’s eighth-inning single.

“If you look at other teams in the league, they have more home runs than us,” Ray said. “They probably have more extra-base hits than us, too. The home run doesn’t come every inning, but two or three hits can score you just as many runs just as fast.

Six straight Wichita batters had productive plate appearances in the second inning, as Luis Hernandez’s sacrifice bunt happened in the midst of five singles, three which scored runs. With two outs, Mittelstaedt got the first of his three RBIs with the first of three singles.

After scoring two runs in the third, the Wingnuts went quiet and allowed Kansas City to turn a five-run deficit into a 6-3 game. That has been a recent pattern for Wichita, which hadn’t scored after the third inning in either of its previous two games.

That trend proved short-lived as the Wingnuts scored four in the eighth to break it open, getting RBI hits from Nester, Kain and Mittelstaedt against Jared Messer.

“That’s the thing we’ve got to get better at as I continue to say – late in the game, adding on (runs),” Hooper said. “It seems like we’ll get some early, then we’ll hit a lull and we won’t add on. That was great to see there at the end of the game against a quality pitcher.”

This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 8:03 PM with the headline "Wingnuts pick apart Kansas City."