Homestand hope

Drillers look to rebound from slow start

They may have gotten off to a slow start this season, but the Tulsa Drillers hoped that a long homestand would help jump-start a climb up the standings.

Following a difficult 2015 in which Tulsa set a franchise record by using 69 different players throughout the season, going just 62-77 (their worst record since 1995), the Drillers were looking to start their second year as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ AA affiliate a little stronger.

Unfortunately, they stumbled to a league-worst 4-11 mark over the first 15 contests, but seemed to start the process of turning things around with consecutive wins in late April.

The first was an impressive comeback that saw the Drillers enter the ninth inning trailing 4-3 before a five-run outburst led them to an eventual 8-6 triumph at Springfield on Sunday, Apr. 24.

The next night, before a boisterous home crowd of 3,616 at ONEOK Field, the Drillers defeated the Arkansas Travelers 4-3 in the first of eight straight home games.

That win left Tulsa four games back of the Texas League’s Northern Division-leading Springfield Cardinals (10-7).

“We just keep playing hard,” said Drillers first-year manager Ryan Garko, who played in the majors, primarily with Cleveland, from 2005-10. “The guys are having better at-bats, it’s just good to see. The wins will come. We have good, young players and they’re getting better each night.”

On this night, the Drillers chased Arkansas starting pitcher Victor Alcantara (the L.A. Angels’ No. 4-rated prospect by Baseball America) in the fourth inning after Willie Calhoun jacked a two-out three-run home run over the wall in right field, putting Tulsa up 4-1.

Tulsa starter Chris Anderson (2-1), who led the Drillers with a 9-7 record last season, had his usual issues, mixing in occasional excellence with control problems. He allowed three runs on three hits in five innings, but also walked six, increasing his season total to a league-leading 20.

In the top of the fifth, he walked the first two batters, and both subsequently scored on RBI singles, cutting the Drillers’ lead to 4-3.

“He battled, he was good early and he battled late,” Garko said of Anderson. “That’s progress. He keeps getting better each time out.”

The good news is that the Drillers’ bullpen held on to the lead, as relievers Rob Rogers, Jordan Schafer and Caleb Dirks combined to allow just two hits and one walk over the final four innings. 

Schafer, a former major league outfielder from 2009-15 before being converted to a pitcher for this season, struck out two and didn’t allow a baserunner in the eighth inning. Dirks earned the save with a perfect ninth.

“We’ve had some leads that we’ve lost, so for those three guys to come in and do it with the one-run lead and hold it, it was good to see,” Garko said.

Overall, the Drillers are hoping for more consistency this year, although another season of frequent call-ups is likely on tap once again, because that fits with the parent club’s philosophy. The idea is to try to instill in its players a resiliency that enables them to handle continual change, thereby producing better, mentally tougher players in the long run.

“It’s the norm, it’s not the exception, for the Dodgers now and we love it,” Garko said of player movement. “We give guys different opportunities each night. We ask our players to be flexible, whether it’s playing different positions, hitting in different spots in the lineup, or moving throughout the different levels. We ask our players to be strong enough mentally to go compete at the next spot. It gives guys opportunities much more than it’s a hindrance. For us in this locker room, whoever’s here, we are all Dodgers first and they know what we expect of them each night.” 

Third baseman Brandon Trinkwon, who played 58 games for the Drillers and 70 for Single-A Rancho Cucamonga last year, admitted that it can be unsettling to have an unstable lineup all season, but acknowledged that is the nature of minor league baseball.

“Last year was a pretty intense year for that, we had a lot of people going up and down, basically it was a different team the whole year,” recalled Trinkwon, who batted .232 in Tulsa last season. “Minor league baseball is a crazy game, it could very well happen this year. Any day, your name could be called and you go somewhere else. Some guys, I feel like, would be a little more comfortable knowing they’re going to be here most of the year. It just depends on who we pick up and who we lose. You just got to stay with it.

“But right now, the core of this team is pretty good.”

For more from John, read his article on the five-game winning streak that closed the Tulsa Oilers' 2015-16 season.