Doomed from the start

Several factors can be blamed for dismal season

By DAVE RASBACH
Valley Press Staff Writer

But their biggest loss may have occurred before they even boarded a bus for the Antelope Valley. In fact, it didn't even come on a baseball diamond.

Instead, the JetHawks' most lopsided setback of the season probably came in late March in a board room at the Seattle Mariners' Peoria, Ariz., spring training facility as the Mariners' minor league brass distributed players through the system for the upcoming season.

Throughout spring training, the JetHawks expected to land the better part of a team that won 72 games and qualified for the Midwest League playoffs in 1998 while at Class A Wisconsin.

Included among those potential JetHawks were highly regarded pitching prospects Ryan Anderson, Gil Meche and Joel Pineiro.

But for a number of reasons, primarily centered around an extraordinarily weak Seattle farm system from top to bottom, none of those three pitchers nor a few other highly regarded Mariners prospects were assigned to the Lancaster roster. Instead, they were rushed to Class AA New Haven in the hope that would speed up their progress to save a floundering major league franchise.

"I felt there were a number of guys, including those pitchers, that should have at least started the season here," Lancaster manager Darrin Garner said. "I thought there were some guys that still needed to prove some things here. . . I fought to get them, but people in our player development department felt otherwise."

And though the loss of that kind of talent certainly hurt the JetHawks in 1999, it might have been even more damaging in the message it sent the players that did come to Lancaster.

In essence, it may have given the JetHawks an excuse to lose.

And lose they did.

Despite winning 11 games in the final two weeks of the season, the JetHawks set a franchise record with 85 losses and finished with the worst record in the California League for the first time since the team moved to Lancaster in 1996.

In fact, Lancaster had the worst record in all of minor league baseball through most of the season. They just barely shed it with two weeks to play.

"That was definitely big for these guys," Garner said. "We didn't want to be known as the worst team in baseball. That's something nobody wants."

The JetHawks barely pulled ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers' Florida State League affiliate in Vero Beach thanks to a sevengame win streak from Aug. 22-28. Prior to that, the JetHawks never won more than three games at a time.

But the JetHawks found numerous ways to begin and continue losing streaks, including a minorleague season high 12-game slide from June 3-16.

Troubled times

It got so bad at times that losing almost seemed to be accepted in the Lancaster clubhouse. Sentiments often ranged anywhere from frustration to helplessness to utter despair.

And make no mistake about it, this was not a team full of losers. In fact, the JetHawks probably had more raw talent on their roster in 1999 than the team Rick Burleson led to a franchise-best 78 wins in 1998. They certainly had more early draft picks.

But they didn't have the aggressive winning personality of either team Burleson led to the playoffs the previous two seasons.

Although the players should have found ways to motivate themselves, a lot of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of the team's manager and coaching staff that failed to light a fire through most of the embarrassing season.

"I think we had a very good coaching staff," Garner said. "I think all three of us did a good job of presenting these guys with the proper information they needed to make progress. What they did with it was their own decision."

But with Garner's easy-going and very personable demeanor, the players may never have been pushed to perform up to their abilities and utilize the information Garner and his coaches presented to them.

"I told you before the season, I'm only going to be me," said Garner, who managed at rookie-level Peoria for two seasons before coming to Lancaster. "What you see is what you get - win or lose. I'm not going to go in there and chew on these guys, because that just isn't me."

But without any semblance of that fear element, the JetHawks often seemed undisciplined both on offense and defense. Costly mistake after costly mistake cost Lancaster ballgame after ballgame as the season spun out of control.

"We've shown flashes of what we are capable of," Garner said. "But we were never able to put it together consistently."

Keeping it together

Nowhere was that inconsistency more obvious than on the Lancaster pitching staff.

Pitching coach Greg Harris often had to wonder if he was running a baseball team, a M.A.S.H. unit or a psychiatric ward.

Lancaster had its share of promising young pitchers in 1999, including Neil Longo (6-7, 5.70 ERA), Brandon Parker (9-7, 5.09 ERA), Justin Kaye (3-5, 5.75 ERA, 14 saves) and Chris Mears (3-6, 7.58 ERA), who was a midseason promotion from Wisconsin.

But the JetHawks also had an inordinate number of pitchers coming off major surgery. No fewer than seven Lancaster pitchers had elbow or shoulder surgery in the past three years, as they struggled both physically and mentally to return to where they once were.

"This is the first time I had to deal with this type of situation," said Harris, who joined the Mariners out of the Tampa Bay farm system. "It's a little different, because you have to help them realize that the velocity will come back. Maybe not to where it was, but it will come back. You have to learn to pitch with what you've got. In essence, you almost have to teach them to pitch again."

While some of the unlucky seven, such as Greg Wooten (10-4, 4.33 ERA) and at times Jeff Farnsworth (3-6, 6.50 ERA, 3 saves), grasped what Harris was trying to teach, others never got it. Once promising prospects Russ Koehler, Derek Bienaisz and Joe Victery were all midseason releases.

As if that weren't a big enough hurdle for Harris and his pitchers to overcome, there were always the unforgiving winds at Lancaster Municipal Stadium which helped inflate the JetHawks' team ERA to a Cal League-high 5.74 runs per game. Only reliever Zach Stark (1-2, 3.99 ERA) had an ERA under 4.00.

"You had to remind these guys that it's not always them," Harris said. "We've seen pop flies go out of the ballpark. So you always have to be in there encouraging these guys. I think an ERA in the low fives would have been good for here. We had one in the mid to upper fives, so we definitely had some work to do."

Harris also was left wondering what happened to his bullpen in the second half.

After helping pick up the pieces for an relatively weak starting rotation in the first 70 games, the bullpen was expected to be even stronger in the second half.

But as the starters got more consistent in the second half, the bullpen began to slide. Late-game leads that should have been safe, no longer were.

During one frustrating road trip in July, the JetHawks lost eight of nine games. The sad thing is they should have won at least seven of them, but lost leads in the seventh inning or later five times.

"When you look at it, that stretch really hurt us," Garner said. "Especially when you see that we had a chance for the playoffs in the second half. If we could have won the games we should have in that stretch, it could have been a different story."

Tale of two halves

The inconsistency and mistakes weren't limited to the pitching staff, though.

The Lancaster offense chipped in for its share of losses as well, especially in the first half, when the JetHawks hit only 39 home runs and hovered near the bottom in most offensive categories despite playing half their games at The Hangar.

The team was hurt when Luis Figueroa and Mike Marchiano were lost to injury, but countless opportunities were wasted by baserunning blunders or the lack of timely hitting.

The offense came around well in the second half, as the JetHawks finished fourth in the league with a .279 team batting average and upped their season home run total to 142.

"Our offense really picked it up in the second half," Garner said. "I was expecting more from it in the first half, but these guys stuck with it and really made some improvements in the second half. I think we were a tough team to beat through most of the second half."

The main reason for the offensive improvement was the addition of Patrick Williams and the return of Jason Regan from New Haven.

Williams hit .324 with 59 RBI and set a new franchise record for home runs in a season with 26. Regan also made his presence known, hitting .255 with 45 RBI and 15 home runs, which helped him establish a new franchise record for career home runs (56).

Add those two to Greg Connors (.268, 16 home runs, team-high 84 RBI) and Jermaine Clark (.315, 6, 61, 112 runs scored, 33 steals), who were the most consistent offensive players for the JetHawks all season, and it's easy to see why the JetHawks' offense was so much more dangerous in the second half. Alex Fernandez (.282, 14, 62) and Harvey Hargrove (.294, 11, 80), who had a strong second half, also chipped in good seasons.

But Lancaster still finished last in the South Division second-half standings with a 32-38 mark. That was a nine-game improvement over its dismal 23-47 record in the first half.

"I hate to lose as much as anyone," Garner said. "But you have to remember on this level, winning isn't everything. You have to step back and look at how much the players progressed. . . I think we had some guys that made some strides from where they began the season. That's good to see."

Only time will tell if that means more victories down the line.

Uploaded September 7, 1999