Bisons not meeting expectations
Players-only chat follows another loss
Bisons reliever Tom Mastny said the topic of discussion in a 20-minute players- only meeting after Sunday’s game was Father’s Day.
“We were just thanking our fathers, just having a good time,” Mastny said, without a trace of a smile.
Anybody who watched Buffalo’s 5-3 loss to the Durham Bulls before 10,939 at Dunn Tire Park knew that was not the case.
The Bisons committed a season-high four errors, threw a run-scoring wild pitch and haphazardly ran the bases as they fell for the fifth time in six games.
“We looked like we were sleepwalking today,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “We looked like we were at a Father’s Day picnic instead of at a baseball game. It’s unacceptable.”
“We’re embarrassing ourselves,” said left fielder Jason Cooper, whose two-run homer in the sixth tied the game at 2-2.
The Bisons are in the middle of one of their most disappointing stretches since their association with the Cleveland Indians began in 1995.
Buffalo fell 12z games behind first-place Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the International League North, its greatest divisional deficit since 1994. And at 31-40, the Herd will be in danger tonight of dropping to 10 games under .500 for the first time since 1999.
Cooper said a players-only meeting seemed necessary.
“It seems like our focus is misguided. We’re worried about stats, worried about getting called up, worried about the lineup,” he said. “The bottom line is we have to get back to fundamental baseball.”
To be sure, the Bisons’ struggles can largely be traced to the drumbeat of injuries in Cleveland consistently pilfering their best players.
But Lovullo saw no excuse for Sunday’s effort. Besides, three players who figured to be in Cleveland contributed the most to the loss: Mastny, Asdrubal Cabrera and Jensen Lewis.
Starter Dan Reichert pitched well after struggling in his first three Bisons starts, throwing five scoreless innings. But Lewis opened the game’s scoring in the sixth, allowing a two-run, opposite field homer to Chris Richard.
The game then unraveled in the seventh. After Lewis (0-1) walked the leadoff man and first baseman Jordan Brown dropped a throw at first, Durham attempted to sacrifice the runners to second and third. Lewis cleanly fielded Jon Weber’s bunt up the third base line, but his throw drew third baseman Aaron Herr well off the bag.
And one out later, a routine sacrifice fly to center scored two Durham runs. Cabrera, who earlier got picked off first base and called off the left fielder only to watch a pop-up fall, cut off Brad Snyder’s throw from the outfield. Trying to force out the Durham runner at first, he then whipped the ball past Brown to bring in another run.
Mastny’s wild pitch in the ninth provided a fitting ending to a day where little went the Herd’s way.
“A lot of things went wrong,” Mastny said. “It’s just one of those days.”
Lovullo said there will be no major changes, speeches or fiery displays of emotion.
“I’ll address this internally, and we’ll look to get better from here,” Lovullo said.
But Cooper also knows it takes a lot to make the fans boo at Dunn Tire Park, and that’s what he heard late Sunday. So he is not about to watch the Bisons suffer their first losing season since partnering with the Indians.
At least not without a fight.
“It’s embarrassing,” Cooper said. “To stand out there and have the fan support that we have and to play the kind of games we’ve been playing lately, it’s unacceptable.”
