Goldeyes’ surge cause for optimism

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This article was published 28/07/2023 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A late spark has increased the sense of optimism around the Winnipeg Goldeyes.

There’s no sugar-coating that it’s been a disappointing season for the Fish. The club has struggled to a 28-37 American Association record (prior to Friday’s battle with the visiting Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks), good for the moniker of “bottom dwellers,” and have never truly got it going at any point.

With just 34 games remaining in the fading schedule, a playoff bid seems unlikely in a season that was so greatly anticipated.

Indeed, the hype around the club in the off-season has compounded the disappointment, perhaps, with a revered new skipper in Greg Tagert taking the reins in the franchise’s 30th-anniversary season and Max Murphy, the American Association’s reigning MVP, whose 2022 season ended early after a gruesome collision at home plate in the playoffs, agreeing to return under the new regime.

The Fish aren’t beached just yet, sitting four games back of the Sioux City Explorers for a spot in the eight-team playoff picture. More importantly, the team is playing loose and a five-game winning streak has shown the Fish have no intentions of going away quietly entering the series opener against the Redhawks (32-31).

The bats have produced 35 runs over the longest winning streak of the season, led by Murphy, who is finding his stride with the team’s back against the wall, with 11 hits, a .458 batting average and three homers in the last week alone.

“I think there’s a lot of stuff going on,” said Murphy, who led the league with 19 home runs entering Friday’s contest. “I think it’s been a combination of a lot of things — some things I can talk about, some things I can’t.

“Early in the season it seemed like guys were not relaxed. And recently, on this good win streak that we’ve been on, it seems like everyone kind of just relaxed and started playing their game and that’s really what we needed to be doing the whole time. I think it’s taken some time for a lot of guys to get there and, as a team, get to a place where we can just relax and play loose.”

Murphy stopped short of saying he felt like the team’s back is against the wall, rather, said the club understands the near-six-foot deep hole it’s dug itself into.

“We’ve looked really bad at times and we’ve played really poorly and it’s kinda like, now at this point it’s either gonna go one way or the other. It’s a situation where you don’t press in because we’ve done so bad that if we just ended up staying bad and not making it in (the playoffs), we kind of already saw that that’s where it was going.

“But also, there is a chance, so if we just play relaxed then maybe we sneak in and something crazy happens in the playoffs.”

At the beginning of the year, Tagert noted he was still finding out what his players were capable of doing. It appears the feeling-out process may have taken a bit longer than anticipated.

“Part of it is, it’s also a learning experience for the players to get used to a manager,” said Tagert. “It’s an adjustment for everybody, there’s a lot of newnesses, obviously, with (longtime Goldeyes manager) Rick (Forney) departing and things being a certain way, whether it’s the way the game’s managed or the way you prepare, but the type of roster — that’s really the key — the type of roster that is put on the field.”

Tagert stood by his roster-building decisions over the off-season, adding the club’s play in July has him feeling optimistic about the rest of the year. He also explained if the Goldeyes are to make a late run, it has to start with the pitching rotation.

“We have the ability to score some runs but we’re not the club that’s going to come back from five or six runs down in the first couple of innings, and there’s no doubt the corresponding struggle for us is when we have been down early,” he said.

“As we enter the last six weeks of the season, we are a club that has to play out of desperation now. We’ve dug ourselves such a hole that a nice little streak is not going to make up for the hole we dug. So hopefully all those areas that we’ve been good at — but we’ve had those inconsistencies — if we can eliminate those, I like where our club is at in the last month.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jfreysam