The Dragons were in last place — a spot they still occupy — 20 games out of first place, and they had nine games left in the first half.
“A freedom for their mind to play with some freedom to find ways to start connecting and just paying way more attention to the to the small details,” Harrison Jr. said. “That’s what we’ve done.”
Harrison Jr. encouraged his players to focus on today, forget about the past and not focus on the upcoming second half when they start over even with all those teams far ahead of them in the standings.
The Dragons played some good baseball in three one-run losses to begin last week’s series at Lake County. Then they won, lost and won. That felt a lot better.
On Tuesday night at Day Air Ballpark in the opener of a six-game series against Fort Wayne, the Dragons played well again. The second half begins Friday, but they clearly had their minds on winning a game that is meaningless to the first-half standings.
And on the strength of three home runs, good starting pitching by Adam Serwinowski and a focused finish on the mound by Irvin Machuca, the Dragons enjoyed the freedom to celebrate a 6-4 victory over the TinCaps.
“We are losing a lot, but we feel really proud because we practice together, we play together, and we’re doing everything together,” shortstop Leo Balcazar said.
Balcazar, the Dragons’ steadiest hitter, celebrated his 21st birthday with a two-run single in the third inning and his sixth home run in the fifth. The single broke a 1-1 tie. The homer pushed the lead to 6-1.
“It feels so special because it’s my birthday,” he said. “I put in hard work with all my teammates. It’s a process, some good things, bad things, bad days. But this is what it is. It’s valuable.”
Winning three out of four is a good stretch, but the Dragons (21-43) can’t let it be fool’s gold or assume it is momentum — even if it might be — into a much better second half of the season.
“We’re thinking day to day,” Harrison Jr. said. “We can’t predict what’s going to happen 70 games from now, but we can predict what we can do today and control what we can do tomorrow.”
Serwinowski (1-4) stayed focused after a 1-2 slider hung over the plate a little too much when Brandon Butterworth led off the game with his fourth home run.
“Can’t hang that slider,” he said. “After that it was pretty much smooth sailing, couple ground balls here and there, couple long fly balls, but overall pretty good outing. I’m happy with it. I’ll build off of it.”
Serwinowski allowed three hits, walked one and struck out three. His ERA was 2.18 through his first five starts. Since then that number rose as high as 5.79 while he worked to regain command of his fastball and slider.
“I challenged him before the game to just throw as many strikes and have as little pitches in the inning as possible, just trying to keep him in attack mode,” Harrison Jr. said. “That’s when he’s his best. He’s a lot better than a lot of the opposing hitters.”
Meanwhile, the Dragons bats were putting Serwinowski in position for his first win. John Michael Faile hit his ninth home run and Connor Burns his eighth home run in the fourth to push the lead to 5-1. Then Balcazar capped his birthday with another homer.
“Big moments have happened for him a lot,” Harrison Jr. said of Balcazar. “I was just happy to see him have some really good things happen for him today because he’s put in a lot of work.”
The Dragons have suffered more than their share of losses in the ninth. This time it was Machuca’s turn to protect a three-run lead. He allowed a one-out home run.
Then with two outs he walked 18-year-old phenom Leo De Vries and Rosman Verdugo after getting ahead of both hitters 0-2. Both showed discipline and refused to chase pitches barely off the plate.
Then Machuca, after a visit from pitching coach Willie Blair, got ahead of Braedon Karpathios 0-2. And after a foul ball, Machuca struck him out on a high fastball to secure his second save.
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