TEXAS LEAGUE : Travelers singing blues once again
Posted on Sunday, August 3, 2008
The postgame blues concert provided the mood music for what the Arkansas Travelers have gone through lately.
The Travelers scored for the first time in two-plus games but lost their fourth consecutive, 5-2, to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals at Dickey-Stephens Park on Saturday.
Before a crowd of 5, 429 braving game-time temperatures over 100 degrees and lingering for the postgame show, Travs right-hander Dan Denham had a promising start and the Travs cut a three-run Naturals lead to one. But Northwest Arkansas center fielder Jose Duarte stretched the lead with a tworun home run in the seventh as the Naturals won their eighth consecutive game against the Travelers and took a 14-12 lead in the season series. “I’m never too comfortable because it’s always a battle to the finish with these guys,” said Northwest Arkansas Manager Brian Poldberg, whose team holds a four-game lead in the Texas League North Division second-half race. “I never take anything for granted.” Arkansas starter Dan Denham pitched three perfect innings before the Naturals put together a three-run fourth. Arkansas cut it to 3-2 — and ended
2 a scoreless streak of 28 / 3 innings — in the fifth when Nate Sutton hit an RBI triple and scored on Dan Cortes’ wild pitch. But Duarte made reliever Daniel Davidson pay for a walk with his two-run home run over the left-field fence in the seventh. Cortes (7-4 ) went 5 innings with 5 hits and 5 walks allowed and 5 strikeouts. Chris Hayes worked the ninth for his ninth save.
“Cortes probably had his best start in the last three or four,” Poldberg said.
Denham (9-9 ) lasted 6 innings and was charged with 3 runs on 5 hits while allowing 2 walks and striking out 5.
“He was just getting up, elevating his pitches right there but, gosh, the only blemish was that one inning,” Magallanes said of Denham.
Arkansas loaded the bases with no outs in the first and got nothing. Coby Smith and Wil Ortiz singled and Brian Stavisky walked, but Mark Trumbo popped out, Nate Sutton was called out on strikes and Chris Pettit flied out.
“The first inning, I think, changes the whole game,” Poldberg said. “Bases loaded no outs and Cortes gets out of that. They get two or three there and the whole game probably changes.”
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