“I can be an A student when I want,” Cardona said. “He elevated my game, and he was right. I knew I had to do that, so I appreciate it.”
Cardona’s report card since June 27 has been straight A’s. The Reds minor-league pitcher of the month for July earned another A and victory Wednesday night in the Dragons’ 4-2 victory over Lake County at Day Air Ballpark in seven innings.
On July 2, Cardona (7-4) pitched six no-hit innings against the Captains in a shutout victory at home. The Captains, which began the evening with a 9-6 victory in the completion of Tuesday’s game that was suspended by rain, lead the Midwest League in runs, batting average and OPS.
Cardona, a 19th-round pick from Marist, doesn’t blow hitters away with velocity. But he effectively mixes a low 90s fastball with a slider, change-up and curve.
“He’s consistent, he fills the zone up, he’s mixing his pitches well,” Harrison Jr. said. “He just needs some reassurance sometimes.”
Cardona allowed five hits and struck out eight. One of the RBI singles he allowed was a blooper.
“They’re aggressive, they want to get on base, they want to swing,” Cardona said. “So I tried to use it against them. I’ll be in the zone and we’ll battle, we’ll see whose stuff is better. And tonight my field made a lot of plays for me, and I got a couple punchies with swings and misses. But it all started with getting ahead. Had I not gotten ahead, I wouldn’t have had the success that I had.”
Cardona also enjoyed pitching to catcher Connor Burns again. They played together in Daytona last year and Burns just joined the Dragons after Logan Tanner was put on the 60-day injury list. Burns was a fifth-round choice from Long Beach State last year and was a two-time defensive player of the year in the Big West Conference.
“It was awesome to have him catch me,” Cardona said. “That’s my good friend, so we had a good rapport.”
The Dragons (22-16) are in second place in the West Division and trail West Michigan (22-15) by a half game.
“I’m just happy we all are putting the Dayton Dragons in a chance to get to the playoffs and hopefully win it all,” Cardona said. “This felt like a playoff game.”
The Dragons scored half their runs with the help of productive outs, one of the “little things” Harrison Jr. emphasizes to his young team.
They took a 2-0 lead in the first inning with three hits, an RBI ground out by Cam Collier and RBI single by Leo Balcazar. Carlos Jorge and Ethan O’Donnell hit back-to-back doubles in the fifth for a 3-1 lead. Then Collier doubled to the opposite field to start the sixth, moved to third on a fly ball to right by Balcazar and scored on a sacrifice fly by Jay Allen II.
In each game, including the final run on Allen’s sacrifice fly, Harrison Jr. took a chance at sending runners on medium-depth fly balls. Both times the throws were off target and runs scored.
“We’ve got to create our own luck sometimes,” Harrison Jr. said. “We typically play close games with them and anytime we get a chance to push it, he’s got to make a perfect play to beat us.”
Simon Miller pitched the seventh and ran into a two-out, bases-loaded jam because of a tapper up the first-base line that turned into a hit. But he got a strikeout to end the game for his third save.
The conclusion of Tuesday’s game rendered unusual happenings in the late innings.
Hector Rodriguez hit a two-out, two-run single in the eighth to cut Lake County’s lead to 3-2. Nothing unusual about that. But Balcazar, who had homered only once this season, homered to left leading off the ninth to tie the score. The Captains had led since about 7:20 Tuesday night when they scored three runs (two unearned because of a Balcazar throwing error) in the first inning.
The Captains scored on a two-out soft single in the 10th after John Murphy struck out the first two batters. The Dragons matched that on O’Donnell’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the inning.
Then Murphy, who had allowed four earned runs this season in 29 innings, had has roughest inning of the year. A three-run homer by Cooper Ingle capped a five-run 11th that saw four earned runs score against Murphy. The Dragons scored twice in the 11th on singles by Balcazar and Allen II.
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