Mike Couzens has been named manager of broadcasting and media relations, the Fort Wayne TinCaps announced today.
FORT WAYNE – In a Midwest League baseball season that lasts from April to September and stretches over 140 games, the general idea for each player is to keep his emotions in check – not too high, not too low; maintain a line so flat it would take a defibrillator to make it bump.
That explains the nearly half-dozen or so “one day at a time” responses from relief pitcher Matt Jackson, whose 4 1/3 innings of 1-run middle relief helped the TinCaps to a 5-2 victory over Bowling Green on Sunday before 6,474 fans in Parkview Field.
“You want to stay focused and take every day one day at a time,” Jackson said, as though he were reciting from the Crash Davis Book of Baseball Clichés. “You don’t want to look ahead on it. You just take it one day at a time.”
But with every win – and Sunday’s was the TinCaps’ seventh in a row and 14th in their last 17 games – manager Jose Flores can’t help but look ahead. In fact, his recent managing style is predicated on a possible playoff berth.
By sweeping four games at Lansing, Mich., last week and winning the first two in the current four-game series with Bowling Green (19-23 second half, 50-61 overall), the TinCaps (26-16, 62-50) are strengthening at least a second-place finish in the Eastern Division behind Great Lakes, which finished second in the first half and already has a playoff spot. If Great Lakes wins the second half, a second- or third-place division finish by the TinCaps would put them into the September playoffs.
Admittedly, Flores, who pulled starting pitcher Mike Watt after three innings Sunday even though Watt gave up one run and struck out five Bowling Green Hot Rods, is looking toward next month.
“We’ve got about three starters that are on innings watch,” Flores said. “We’re trying to save their innings just in case they do get in the playoffs – we have some innings left for them. We’ve limited some of these guys on their innings.”
Enter Jackson (3-1), who entered with a 1-0 deficit, scattered five hits and struck out a pair.
Held scoreless for the first four innings, the TinCaps went up 2-1 on Jonathan Galvez’s two-run homer in the fifth, made it 4-1 on runs scored from Danny Payne and Jeudy Valdez, then added another run in the seventh when Payne’s single to right field drove in Everett Williams, who beat the relay throw from right for a two-out triple.
“It’s called the dog days of August for a reason,” said Payne, who had two hits. “You don’t ever want to be into August with nothing to play for, so if you reach August and you’re in the playoff hunt, it gives you a little incentive to come to the ballpark every day.”
Even if it is one day at a time.
