Hayden allowed one run on two hits and three walks and struck out three. That was the good news for the Dragons. The bad news was another one-run loss, 5-4 to the Great Lakes Loons at Day Air Ballpark.
“Being able to go home and reset — and I threw a bullpen at home — and get a clean slate,“ Hayden said. ”Now post all-star break just get back to what you were doing."
For Hayden, that meant a return to attacking hitters. His stuff on his fastball and off-speed pitches (cutter and slider) had been a little off since early June while his ERA rose from 2.27 to 4.50.
“My stuff didn’t feel really good and I was struggling to command it,” he said. “And then you’re out there trying to do too much and pitch around guys and nibble a little bit. So it was just getting back to attacking the zone, attacking the hitters and put the pressure on them.”
Hayden went on the attack in the first inning and leaned on his fastball the first time through the order. That opened up his off-speed pitches the second time through. And he’s no longer willing to accept that one of his pitches wants to take the night off.
“The biggest thing for me is just making the in-game adjustments quicker than I had in the past,” Hayden said. “Sometimes it was throw a few bad sweepers and there’s no adjustment. It was just the rest of the day sweepers were bad, or the cutters were bad, or whatever it is. You’ve got to be able to make in-game adjustments faster than I did for a few weeks because I know I have good stuff.”
Hayden fell behind 1-0 in the first. New 20-year-old shortstop Carlos Sanchez, who took over the position when Leo Balcazar was promoted to AA Chattanooga last week, didn’t charge a bouncer quite hard enough off the bat of speedy Loons leadoff hitter Kendall George. The result was an infield single.
Then a wild pitch and stolen base moved George around to third. Hayden threw a 2-0 fastball at the bottom of the strike zone to Logan Wagner. And Wagner hit a laser to right-center to score George.
“In hindsight, he could have probably been a little more aggressive coming in,” Dragons manager Vince Harrison Jr. said of Sanchez. “But George beat that and he got second on the wild pitch. He bounced the pitch, and then he steals third. And then two out, 2-0 fastball to one of their better hitters and we gave up the run. That was frustrating, but he did regain his composure and shut them down.”
The Dragons tied the score in the fifth on Carlos Jorge’s RBI groundout. But in the sixth the Loons scored their other four runs with two outs against Brian Edgington, who struck out the first two batters of the inning.
The rally to a 5-1 lead went like this: single, single, single, single, error, single, four runs. The Dragons should have gotten out of the inning trailing 2-1, but Sanchez dropped a soft line drive that allowed a run to score. And it gave Carlos Rojas a chance to hit a two-run single.
“There’s no confidence boosting when you drop a ball,” Harrison Jr. said. “You gotta make that play at a premium position up the middle. You have to be trusted. You have to value the ball, not saying he didn’t, but it’s an honor to play shortstop. Not everybody can play shortstop. He’s getting an opportunity.”
The Dragons mounted a comeback. Jack Moss, who is hitting .440 in his first 10 games with the team, singled in a run in the sixth. In the ninth, the Dragons scored on a groundout and Yerlin Confidan’s single. But with Confidan on first, Sanchez, who had two hits, struck out to end the game.
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