Spikes closed season strong

Guy Cipriano

Their predecessors left them a mess, one that appeared ready to spread when the State College Spikes lost to Williamsport 15-2 to begin this season.

CDT photo/Michelle Bixby

Pitcher Victor Black, a first-round draft pick by the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a standout on the mound for the Spikes this summer.

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Considering the way the Spikes ended 2008 — with just 18 wins — a poor start was the last thing the four-year- old franchise needed.

On-field credibility needed to be restored — and fast. The Spikes handled their part of the equation during the next 75 games.

A season with a wretched start included a beautiful ending as the Spikes hammered Mahoning Valley 14-4 earlier this month.

The victory gave the Spikes 38 wins and 38 losses. A conversation between manager Gary Robinson and Pittsburgh Pirates director of player development Kyle Stark seven days before the finale summarized what transpired this season.

“I told Kyle I wish we had 70 more games to play,” Robinson said. “Our guys are just starting to get it. It would be fun to see how we do over another 70.”

After a sluggish start, on and off the field, the Spikes proved .500 records can yield good will.

Each victory turned a once-skeptical fan base into ballpark regulars, with seven crowds of more than 4,000 fans entering Medlar Field at Lubrano Park in August.

The mild success also aided the developmental process of the 47 players who played for the Spikes this summer. The group ranged from 2009 first-round draft picks Tony Sanchez and Victor Black to Zach Foster and Craig Parry, the Pirates’ final two picks in 2008.

Sanchez had a short stay with the Spikes. The catcher selected fifth overall appeared in four games before heading to full-season West Virginia. Black, a supplemental first-round pick, never left State College, allowing fans to watch him use a 6-foot-4 frame to heave 96 mph fastballs the entire summer.

Black, in some ways, epitomized the team. He looked brilliant one outing, but sometimes struggled the next. He never wavered throughout the process.

“There were no expectations,” he said. “I didn’t want to come in thinking one thing and then it was too hard or too easy.”

Instead, this was about staying somewhere in the middle, which can be a tricky task for young professionals.

Thirteen players selected in this year’s draft started playing baseball in February. The only rest many received came during the three-week window between the end of NCAA Division I regular-season play and the beginning of the New York-Penn League schedule.

At times, the grind affected performance. Brock Holt, a ninth-round pick from Rice, was hitting .208 after 30 games. Aaron Baker, a mammoth 11th-round pick from Oklahoma, didn’t crack his first homer until Aug. 3.

Other position players endured similar starts. First baseman Justin Byler, who missed last season because of a fractured forearm, didn’t hit above .230 until Aug. 1. Pat Irvine, who batted .407 with 17 homers and 57 RBIs as a senior at Elon University, finished tied for fourth in the league with 41 RBIs, but he didn’t hit above .230 until Aug. 13. Evan Chambers, a third-round pick from a Florida junior college, walked and struck out looking more than anybody on the team.

Hardly a winning formula.

But improved pitching kept the Spikes competitive.

The staff included holdovers such as Alan Knotts, Mike Williams, Kyle McPherson and Maurice Bankston, who fit a system- wide theme.

“You start going through the list of guys who have taken steps forward, it’s a lot easier to identify those guys than guys that have taken steps back,” Stark said. “The easier question is: Who has been a disappointment because that first list is rather long.”

Pitchers plucked in this year’s draft embraced a system- wide objective: They relished attacking hitters with their fastballs.

Black is an obvious example of what the Pirates are seeking, but lower-round picks such as Phil Irwin (21st round), Jason Erickson (24th) and Marc Baca (42nd) also quickly grasped the organization’s philosophies. Even when the staff failed, like it did during an 8-7 loss at Batavia on Aug 31, lessons were absorbed. Pitching coach Mike Steele remembered his conversation with the staff days after the setback.

“We had a talk about how it sucks to do bad and how it’s painful,” Steele said. “Each and every one of those guys that threw I asked, ‘Does it hurt?’ They said, ‘Yeah, it hurts.’ That’s exactly what it should feel like.”

The staff recovered by allowing 18 runs in the final six games. The Spikes went 4-2 during the stretch to finish .500.

The offensive ending pleased Robinson, as the Spikes scored 41 runs during those six games. They ended the year with a .233 team batting average, a number that seemed unlikely midway through August. Holt (.299), David Rubinstein (.267), Byler (.256), Baker (.247) and Irvine (.245) hit above .240.

“We all knew we could have had a better record if we had done some small things better,” Chambers said. “But we all got better and that was the main goal this season.”

A competitive team helped the business end of the franchise. Slow preseason ticket sales, partially a result of last year’s woes, hurt the franchise early, but attendance rebounded, with the Spikes averaging 3,946 fans per game, a decrease of less than 3 percent from last year’s average. The home finale against Williamsport drew a franchise-record 5,757 fans.

“What that tells me is that there’s a lot of momentum,” general manager Jason Dambach said. “We couldn’t have ended any better.”

The Spikes’ front office and Pirates’ player development department have already started planning for 2010. Spikes employees went on a retreat earlier this month to brainstorm ideas for next season. The Pirates started their fall instructional league two days after the NY-PL season concluded. Many Spikes received invitations to the individualized program in Bradenton Fla., and technical aspects of the game such as swings and throwing mechanics will be addressed.

Robinson said what players experienced this summer should help during instructional league and beyond.

“If you watched us play, you watched a group of guys who are evolving,” he said. “They are going to get knocked backwards. There’s a winning mentality, a culture some of our guys lacked that has to be developed and you can only do that by grinding it out every day.

“The same group of guys we had this year will build upon what they learned about winning and losing and how to play the game. Hopefully, they can start at a much higher level of play when the season starts next year.”