On Wednesday night, 24 hours after setting the franchise record with 14 straight wins, the Dragons ignored the kind of bad baseball that has led to five losing streaks of six or more games.
This team, wearing the same uniforms with the same players, doesn’t care about the past anymore. They just keep playing, and good things are happening over and over again.
The Dragons committed three early-inning errors to create a 3-0 deficit and later cost them a 4-3 lead. It felt like a loss would finally happen on a night when they allowed three unearned runs.
However, this new version of the Dragons didn’t feel that way. They kept scoring, Peyton Stovall kept driving in runs and they ran away to an 11-6 victory over the Lansing Lugnuts.
“I would characterize this as the growth of our team,” manager Vince Harrison Jr. said. “We just dropped three balls early in the game. It was just not very pro, but those situations in the past have created a crumble situation. The biggest thing for me is I feel a belief in there with those guys, that it doesn’t matter, we’re just going to find a way to get back in.”
The Dragons took a 4-3 lead in the third on four walks, a hit batter, two run-scoring wild pitches and an RBI single by Carlos Sanchez. Just the kind of inning that teams on 15-game winning streaks have.
But starting in the fourth, tied 4-4, the bats came alive, especially the bat in the hands of second baseman Stovall. He had hits in his last three at-bats, including a two-run homer, and batted in five runs.
His RBI single was part of a two-run fourth that pushed the lead to 6-4. After Lansing retied the score at 6-6 in the fifth, Stovall hit a two-run single in a three-run sixth and two-run homer in the seventh.
Stovall, a fourth-round pick in 2024, is batting .186 on the season. But he started having better at-bats about the time the winning streak began. In his last 12 games, he’s batting .333 with three homers and 15 RBIs.
“Just trusting my approach, just being confident at the plate, knowing what type of hitter I am,” Stovall said. “Just staying to the middle of the field and just trying to hit line drives. Fortunately, it’s been working out.”
Stovall’s fortunes changed when he had a heart-to-heart talk with himself about how the season, which once seemed so long, had less than a month left.
“I just was in my bed, getting ready for a game, and I was like, ‘Hey, you only have so many more of these left,’” he said. “‘Go out there and give it your all.’ And I think a lot of guys have had the same mindset, and they’re just going out there and just giving it all they got.”
The Dragons are playing with a great will to win. Harrison Jr. has said more than once, he sees a group of players playing with freedom from the fear of losing and making mistakes.
Stovall said the winning streak is cool and everyone is having fun. And he feels that freedom his manager is talking about.
“We fully believe in each other,” he said. “If one guy doesn’t do the job, the next guy will pick them up. It’s been really fun, and win or lose, we’ve shown that we’re going to play hard, and whatever happens, happens. The results that we’ve gotten have been good because we’re playing freely with confidence.”
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