By BRIAN ROBIN
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER - Dave Slemmer was struggling. Kevin Mlodik was struggling. Both would be the first one's to tell you this fact.
"Actually, I was struggling a little bit," said Slemmer, the Visalia first baseman and not-so-proud owner of a .251 batting average. "I came out today and took extra batting practice and worked on some things."
"Some things" ended up being two home runs and an RBI double, which Slemmer dropped on the Lancaster JetHawks Tuesday night.
Combined with Mlodik's two-hit performance over 6 1/3 innings, it provided the Oaks with a 5-2 victory over the JetHawks in front of 3,528 at The Hangar.
As if The Hangar isn't enough of a confidence booster for hitters, how does someone like Mlodik rate taking a one-hitter into the seventh?
"Those were slow, slow slurves," a frustrated Tarrik Brock (0-for-3) said. "I won't call them sliders and I don't want to call them curve balls.
Call them effective. Much more effective than Mlodik and his 4-3 record, 6.07 earned-run average and .351 opponent batting average would warrant.
The loss was Lancaster's second after a four-game winning streak that opened the second half.
It came at the expense of Damaso Marte, who struck out seven and allowed six hits and four walks over seven innings.
Three of the hits, three of the runs and three of the RBI came from one source - Slemmer - who increased his season homer total by 66 percent with two swings of the bat.
Slemmer slammed his first homer leading off the third, parachuting a lob shot just inside the right-field foul pole. Two innings later, he visited the right-field corner again.
This time, the ball stayed in the park, rattling around the rightfield corner long enough and hard enough for right fielder Josh Watts to misplay the ball.
That allowed Slemmer to take third, from where he scored Visalia's second run of its three-run inning one batter later on Troy Rauer's double into short left.
Slemmer's double chased home Jeff DaVanon (walk). Rauer would take third on a wild pitch and score on Ryan Christenson's single to left.
That was enough for Mlodik, who looked like chum to the JetHawks and their .284 team batting average, which is second in the Cal League by one point to High Desert.
"They looked flat to me," a disgusted Lancaster manager Rick Burleson said. "I guess because the wind wasn't blowing out during batting practice, the bats weren't alive.
"But you got to give him credit. The guy was throwing strikes. He was getting ahead with his fastball, then coming in with his breaking stuff. After the third inning, he was going with his breaking ball on the first pitch."
This explains how Mlodik retired the first 10 JetHawks and 15 of the first 17 he faced. That first string ended in the fourth when Jason Regan wangled a one-out walk.
One out later, James Clifford stroked one of the shortest doubles in The Hangar's brief history. The hard-hit ball nearly took off second baseman David Newhan's glove on its way into right center field.
Center fielder Christenson, then nearly took off Clifford's head with a throw six feet off the bag. The throw was so off-line, it nearly hit the sliding Clifford.
Regan took third, where he remained after Shawn Buhner's high chopper to third.
"He was hitting his spots," Buhner said. "He's a guy from the pen who had been hit around lately, and he had good (explicative) tonight."
That was the remnants of the JetHawks' offense until the seventh. Clifford's double was the only Lancaster hit until that inning.
Fittingly, Clifford started the end of Mlodik's evening when he opened the seventh with a walk.
That did the trick. One out later, Yuni Kim - who earlier, lined a foul ball down the left-field line that injured a boy standing in front of the grassy knoll - saved his harm for the Oaks.
Kim sliced an RBI triple into the right-field corner, scoring Clifford with Lancaster's first run.
That ended Mlodik's evening after 6 1/3 innings, 80 pitches, six strikeouts, two runs and only the two extra-base hits.
Enter Juan Perez, who struck out Watts before David Skeels lined a two-out single into left-center to score Kim.