Grand Prairie snaps streak, Wingnuts look to playoffs

Incentive comes in many forms. The Wingnuts didn’t have much on Sunday afternoon after clinching the American Association South Division the night before.

Grand Prairie appeared to have even less. The AirHogs fell out of the playoff race weeks ago and began Sunday with a 15-game losing streak, one more than the number of players that suited up at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

Grand Prairie seized upon motivation to break the league-record losing streak and defeated the Wingnuts 4-1. Grand Prairie scored all of its runs in the first three innings against Jason Van Skike, who needed a win just as badly.

The Wingnuts beat Grand Prairie 21-1 on Saturday, giving Grand Prairie the futility record in historic fashion — Wichita set franchise records for runs and margin of victory.

“That was a rough stretch,” Grand Prairie outfielder Ronnie Richardson said. “We played some good baseball some games, some games were just bad like (Saturday) night when (the Wingnuts) just hit the ball all over the park. To get a win, especially late in the season when the season is almost done, it’s pretty good.”

Grand Prairie was outscored 116-27 during the losing streak, which began six days after it finished losing seven in a row. The roster has been recently depleted by departures for young players returning to college and for players who needed to leave for family reasons.

When Grand Prairie lined up for the National Anthem on Sunday, it looked as if the AirHogs would be hard-pressed to get through nine innings. As few as four pitchers were available and one of them, T.J. Bozeman, was Sunday’s designated hitter.

Rock bottom happened when the Wingnuts scored five runs in four straight innings on Saturday, scoring 10 runs apiece against the first two Grand Prairie pitchers.

“(Saturday) night, that just doesn’t happen,” Richardson said. “I joked with the guys like, ‘They brought football season in the right way, scoring 21 runs.’ Coming to the field today it’s like, it can’t get any worse. You’ve got to go out there and play the game, continue to play hard and try to get a win.”

Richardson started Sunday’s game with a bunt single, scoring later on a bloop RBI single by Victor Diaz. In the third, Richardson was hit by a pitch, stole two bases, and scored on the first of three straight RBI hits.

The Wingnuts matched Grand Prairie’s first inning run but squandered all other opportunities. The wasted a leadoff double by Andy LaRoche in the fourth inning and grounding into three double plays from the fifth inning on, all with runners on first and second.

Van Skike, and the three pitchers who followed him, never retired Grand Prairie in order.

“It technically doesn’t matter but it matters to me,” Wingnuts manager Kevin Hooper said. “Every one of them matters to me, I don’t care if I’m in a softball beer league or whatever. I want to compete. We did some bad things today. We had some opportunities, I thought. …Kind of ran ourselves out of some opportunities.”

Hooper’s frustration conflicts with the fact that both teams have gotten what they wanted out of the first two games of the series. The Wingnuts, the league’s defending champions, clinched their fifth straight division title and Grand Prairie assured that it won’t go into the offseason with a painfully lengthy losing streak.

“With this group of guys, it’s crazy because we’re real young,” Richardson said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who had to leave for school, a couple guys had to leave for a wedding. But playing with 13, 14 guys gives people a chance to play. We’ve got a couple pitchers who used to hit in college. It’s giving them a chance to have a little fun.

“At the end of the year, it’s remembering some of the positives instead of everything being so negative.”

This story was originally published September 6, 2015 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Grand Prairie snaps streak, Wingnuts look to playoffs."