“We needed this moment to go with our hard work,” shortstop Leo Balcazar said. “When we play like that together, we’re going to have something special.”
Pitching coach Willie Blair said his early-season, too-soon-to-panic message to his relievers has been to stick with the process.
“We really preach being aggressive in the zone all the time with our best stuff,” he said. “And today we were able to put together nine innings. So that was fun to watch.”
A rainy evening delayed the first pitch an hour and created a lot of empty seats. The no-shows missed a great performance by three Dragons pitchers, who combined to allow two hits and a walk.
The starter, Jose Montero (1-0), retired 10 straight batters from the second inning through the leadoff batter in the fifth. He struck out five and set the tone. Sikorski dominated the next three innings.
In Sikorski’s first outing on Sunday, he threw only four pitches and lost in the 10th inning on a game-ending wild pitch.
“That was a tough few days for him,” Blair said. “He wanted to get back out there, and he showed it tonight. He got out there and did what we’ve been preaching.”
Montero’s performance lowered the Dragons’ collective ERA by starters to 0.86. They have allowed two earned runs in 21 innings. Sikorski and Adcock did wonders for the bullpen ERA, lowering it from 9.74 to 8.14. For the first time, the bullpen didn’t allow a walk.
“It hasn’t been the walks, per se,” Dragons manager Vince Harrison Jr. said. “It’s been who they walked.”
It’s not the opponents’ best hitters who are drawing the walks, Harrison said, but the best hitters are driving in the other hitters after walks.
“We put the focus back on there,” he said.
Just like they did in Tuesday night’s home opener, the Dragons got off to a good start. Ricardo Cabrera’s sacrifice fly and Victor Acosta’s single created a 2-0 lead in the first.
Leadoff hitter Yerlin Confidan led off the third with his first home run for a 3-0 lead. Trey Faltine singled in a run in the fourth. Then Confidan, who also walked twice, doubled in the final run in the sixth.
“First couple games we were passive, and so we got aggressive,” Harrison Jr. said. “We actually made two really not smart baserunning mistakes, but they were aggressive. And for me, for what we have here, I’d rather have the aggressive mistakes to be able to coach them up and bring them back versus being passive. Guys came out ready to swing, and Confidan was good at the top of the lineup.”
The Dragons lost in extra innings on Saturday and Sunday and led 4-0 Tuesday before losing 8-4. In their first four games, they were 4 for 43 with runners in scoring position. On Wednesday, they were 3 for 13 and left 10 runners on base.
“We’ve literally had a chance to win every game,” Harrison Jr. said. “We haven’t played a complete nine, and we did today. To think that we can be that way and still have a chance to win ... and the same thing with the pitching.”
Finally, there wasn’t a reason the Dragons lost. Instead, there were a bunch of reasons they won.
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