Travis Whitmore’s day began on the bench.It ended with his teammates mobbing him between first and second base.
FORT WAYNE – Fort Wayne manager Shawn Wooten calls it “make or break.”
Not Sunday’s result, a 5-3 loss to Lansing in 10 innings in front of 7,636 fans at Parkview Field.
He’s stressing how the team must respond to the tough defeat.
“After the ninth inning, you can see the air go out of our sail,” Wooten said. “It was a 3-3 ballgame, we weren’t down. I stressed to them, it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose but have the attitude that we’ve had the whole second half.”
Lansing broke the tie with an RBI double by Marcus Knecht off closer Kevin Quackenbush. Jack Murphy followed with an RBI single to center field.
Despite the loss, Fort Wayne (35-27, 65-66 overall) remains two games ahead of West Michigan for the Eastern Division’s final playoff spot. The Whitecaps (33-29) lost at Dayton 6-0.
Fort Wayne’s magic number is seven. The TinCaps have eight games remaining in the regular season.
“Each game counts, each play counts. We know that,” said shortstop B.J. Guinn, who went 3 for 3 with an RBI. “The best thing to do is to try to relax and keep playing.”
The TinCaps missed an opportunity to increase the lead over the Whitecaps, going 2 for 12 with runners in scoring position Sunday. Fort Wayne scored one run each in the sixth, seventh and eighth to tie the game heading into the ninth.
Wes Cunningham led off the bottom of the ninth with a walk. Rocky Gale singled.
Guinn then hit a single to shallow center field. Cunningham held at third, but Gale went too far rounding second base. Lansing first baseman K.C. Hobson cut off the throw to the plate and fired to second and cut down Gale for the first out.
“The base-running mistake, that’s just part of the game,” Wooten said. “That’s the learning process. That’s why we play the game and continue to hammer them on the little aspects of the game.
“It’s not just about throwing strikes, it’s not just about hitting the ball, it’s not about running as fast as you can. It’s about learning how you play this game. The reason why you learn how to play the game is because of those situations. Unfortunately, that happened, but we still had guys in scoring position.”
The TinCaps had runners on the corners with one out. Chris Bisson struck out. Rico Noel walked to load the bases for Cory Spangenberg, who struck out swinging.
“That’s what happens in baseball. That’s what happened in the first half in the sense where they made some pitches and we didn’t do our job,” Wooten said. “ … As a team we’ve been pretty good about putting the ball in play and it didn’t happen.”
Rymer Liriano began the bottom of the 10th with a triple. The next two batters struck out and Cunningham grounded out to end the game.
“You want to give yourself an opportunity to win,” Guinn said. “We did that, we just came up on the short end this time.”
