Wingnuts can’t catch up with Kansas City

Manager Kevin Hooper often describes this Wingnuts season as a roller coaster. But roller coasters are supposed to be fun.

Instead, the Wingnuts are the amusement-park riders hesitant to joyfully put their hands up in fear of what might be around the next corner.

A 27-22 record has Wichita on the fringe of the American Association playoff picture, but the Wingnuts haven’t won — or lost — more than three games in a row.

Every loss, including a 7-4 defeat against Kansas City on Monday at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, feels like a back-to-the-drawing board siege and the Wingnuts are armed with nothing but invisible ink.

“I give the same answers every other night, it seems,” Hooper said. “It’s just frustrating.”

Five innings is the threshold a starting pitcher must reach to earn a win. When a Wingnuts pitcher lasts five innings, it usually means something went wrong.

Hooper offers his pitchers longer leashes than many managers, a tried-and-true method that has helped Wichita starters rebound from difficult openings. Right-hander Jason Van Skike endured a five-inning outing on Monday without the rebound, just missing escape from a plodding first inning.

Adam Bailey followed a double play with a two-out RBI single that proved to be a more decisive turning point. Van Skike labored through 92 pitches without the fastball effectiveness that would have made his lackluster off-speed offerings more palatable.

Though a three-run Kansas City second inning included a couple bloopers that landed for hits, the T-Bones had a baserunner in every inning against Van Skike. And there was nothing cheap about Bailey’s three-run double in the fourth that bounced against the right-field wall and put Kansas City ahead 7-2.

“Skike wasn’t himself tonight,” Hooper said. “You could tell right away, he was trying to feel it out. He was 2-0 to a lot of guys, getting behind in the count.”

A common baseball adage says that momentum goes as far as today’s starting pitcher. Van Skike didn’t give the Wingnuts an honest chance to build upon consecutive weekend wins against the T-Bones, but Wichita’s bats didn’t help the cause much, either.

After scoring two runs in the first inning – one unearned – against Mike Nannini, a 34-year-old who debuted professionally in 1998 and returned to the game last year after five years away, the Wingnuts helped Nannini turn back the clock.

Wichita didn’t record another hit until the fifth inning, and two runs against reliever Aaron Baker didn’t make a significant dent in the deficit.

“There’s always another way to build some momentum as a team,” said Wingnuts catcher John Nester, who had two of Wichita’s six hits. “Whether it’s running a ball down in the gap, making a diving catch, just coming up with a big play on defense or stretching the at-bats out and finding a way to get an inning started there.

“It’s not always going to be getting your starting pitcher to go out and give you seven shutout (innings).”

Eighteen of the Wingnuts’ last 20 hits have been singles, with a pair of doubles. That relative lack of punch can work in their favor, like in a 10-run, 13-single dash against Kansas City on Sunday.

Or it can cause promising innings to fizzle out. The Wingnuts scored two in the seventh on Monday with three singles to start the inning. The next four batters, none with lumbering RBI power, failed to produce more and Wichita stranded runners at first and third.

Hooper’s frustration has helped him arrive at a simple solution to the Wingnuts’ hitting woes.

“Yeah – hit,” Hooper said. “Good at-bats. Hit. Grind it out.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 11:05 PM with the headline "Wingnuts can’t catch up with Kansas City."