Wilmington Blue Rocks shake up Lynchburg Hillcats, 8-6

By Chris Lang
Sports writer
Published: July 22, 2008

Daniel Moskos’ numbers weren’t pretty. The Pirates’ 2007 first-round draft pick had another shaky outing Monday night at City Stadium as the Hillcats lost 8-6 to Wilmington, allowing 12 hits (a season-high for a Hillcat pitcher) and five earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.

But neither Moskos nor Lynchburg manager Jeff Branson were terribly concerned with the final product. Moskos, who is 1-4 with a 13.10 ERA in his last six starts, was happy with his location. Branson was pleased with Moskos’ ability to adjust to Wilmington’s hitters and settle down after a rough start.

“The last few starts, excluding tonight, I was really frustrated,” Moskos said. “Tonight was frustrating in another sense because I threw the ball really well, but the box score doesn’t look good, and the outcome doesn’t look good. But the process that went into it was 10 times better than it has been.”

The Pirates’ organizational approach to pitching is simple — command the fastball, limit pitch counts and pitch to contact. The problem was that when the Blue Rocks made contact, they found holes. Derrick Robinson and Chris McConnell hit back-to-back doubles to start the game, and Cody Strait and Kurt Mertins hit RBI singles to give Wilmington a 3-0 lead in the first inning.

Wilmington pushed the lead to 5-0 in the second on a McConnell sacrifice fly and a Brad Correll single. The Blue Rocks added another in the third before Moskos made some adjustments. At one point, he retired seven of eight batters. Once he reached his pitch count of 85 in the sixth inning, Branson pulled him from the game.

“It got better every inning,” Branson said. “Early, he left some balls up in the zone. But there were good signs of adjustments, of working the ball down in the zone. That’s what you look for in young players. Do they have the ability to make adjustments?

“Yes, he does. But we need to be able to have that, from the get-go, from inning one, from pitch one. You can’t wait three innings to be able to get there. If he’s in the big leagues and he does that, he’s probably going to be out of the game.”

Moskos has allowed 43 hits and 33 earned runs in 22 2/3 innings in his last six starts, and in four of those appearances, he’s allowed at least five earned runs.

“You’ve got to flush them,” Moskos said. “You’ve got to analyze either that night or the next day what you did well, what you did wrong and what you need to improve on. Outside of that, you just flush it. If you’re thinking about the way you pitched in your last start in your next start, it’s not going to go well.

“That’s something I’m a little bit better at because I was a reliever, because you’ve got to flush those bad feelings real quick because you’re back on the bump in a day or two.”

Once Moskos left, the Hillcats began to chip away at Wilmington’s 6-1 lead. Kent Sakamoto, who was a triple shy of the cycle, homered in the sixth and Kris Watts hit an RBI single to cut the lead to 6-3. Wilmington made it 7-3 in the top of the seventh when Correll doubled and scored on a passed ball.

The Hillcats trimmed the lead to 7-5 in the seventh when Jim Negrych hit an RBI single and later scored on an error. Down 8-5 in the bottom of the ninth, Lynchburg loaded the bases with nobody out, but Jamie Romak hit into a 6-4-3 double play. James Barksdale scored to cut the margin to 8-6, but Sakamoto grounded out to second to end the game, leaving Lynchburg (15-16) below .500 for the first time since June 30.

Correll, who hit two home runs in Sunday’s series opener, cracked another homer in the ninth inning Monday, crushing a ball over the fence in left center. Correll’s line for the series is impressive — 7-for-10, three home runs, eight RBIs and four runs scored.

“He’s swinging the bat good,” Branson said. “What are you going to say?”

NOTES: Monday represented a homecoming for Bill Latham, a member of the 1983 Lynchburg Mets team that won 96 games and a Carolina League championship. Latham, a scout for the Boston Red Sox, was in town watching Pirates prospects. … LHP Brian Holliday was promoted to Double-A Altoona Monday.

… RHP Derek Antelo left the game with two outs in the seventh inning with an injury.