A MOUND OF TROUBLE
Plagued by poor pitching and a carousel of coaches, Fuego close book on their worst season, eye changes
If baseball is truly a numbers game, the digits are telling a grim story for the Santa Fe Fuego this summer. In what has been the worst season in the team’s five-year history, the pitching staff has been the lowlight of a historically bad year that mercifully comes to an end with Thursday’s season finale against the Salina Stockade at Fort Marcy Ballpark.
Attendance is down by half, opponents are having a field day against Fuego pitching, and the team has nailed down one of the worst seasons in Pecos League history.
Wednesday’s 18-6 loss to Salina dropped Santa Fe to 18-49, the worst record in the 10-team league and easily the lowest winning percentage in Santa Fe’s history. Much of the blame falls to the pitching, which has surrendered league records for hits (954), runs (764) and average scoring (11.6).
It comes on the heels of a tumultuous year in the dugout as the team has filtered through four different leaders. Manager Keith Wood quit the team in June, then interim manager Rodney Tafoya was let go at the All-Star break earlier this month, the same week the de facto skipper, pitcher T.J. Zarewicz, was traded to Trinidad.
Filling out the lineup card ever since has been middle infielder Joey LaCunga.
“A lot of things contribute to all that, obviously, but the bottom line is we need to make things better in Santa Fe,” said Andrew Dunn, president of the Pecos League. “It starts with finding a proven manager, and that’s something I’ll make sure happens before next year.”
General manager Yvonne Encinias said it’s been a frustrating year in pretty much every aspect. She said a typical crowd on a weeknight had been around 300 fans during the first four seasons. This year it’s maybe half that. Same, too, for weekend crowds that used to approach 800 to 1,000 fans.
“I would like to see a little stability,” she said. “That’s what we were lacking this year with the coaching situation. We really need someone in place who’s going to be stable and dedicated, someone who’s going to work hard for our city and fans and this team. That’s what I hope for next season.”
It got to the point where Encinias had to make player personnel decisions. She sat down with Zarewicz during the All-Star break and gave him the opportunity to vacate his dual role as player-coach just so he could concentrate on being a pitcher — something he came to Santa Fe for.
“I really do feel for the players, especially someone like T.J.,” she said. “He came here to play baseball and use it as a stepping stone, but here he was basically running the team and not being able to just pitch. At the end of the day, he had to be honest with his situation, which is why I traded him.”
Dunn said changes are in the works. He said the team’s wildly imbalanced schedule, in which the Fuego played only 11 road games and had a 42-game home stand to close out the regular season, will come to an end. The team will likely get no more than 40 of the 70 games at home next season.
“People criticized me for giving Santa Fe an unfair advantage, but that apparently wasn’t the case,” Dunn said. “What happened with that team is just disappointing. Running a team in this league is no different than a college football team; it’s nothing without a good leader to do all
the coaching.”
It’s also nothing without quality pitching, something the Fuego sorely lacked. Opponents have scored at least 10 runs in 40 of the team’s 67 games, including a stretch of 12 straight games that was snapped with an 11-9 win over White Sands last Sunday. That same stretch saw opponents score at least 13 runs in nine straight games, a league record.
Dunn said finding quality pitchers is hard enough. Convincing them that Santa Fe — complete with its 285-foot fence to right — is a destination spot isn’t easy.
“The field there is a serious problem,” Dunn said. “The surface isn’t the greatest, and then you have the live ball with the altitude and the short fences. It’s an issue, man, and it’s something that makes it hard to win games if you’re not scoring 15 runs a game.”
Former manager Bill Moore, who now skippers the team in Garden City, Kan., said the first rule to winning in Santa Fe is building a roster by January. By the time the spring season rolls around, the last order of business is finding an arm or two to fill out the bullpen.
As for the rest, the wish list goes on and on. Encinias said having players and management around to start the season helps build relationships with potential sponsors and fosters goodwill with the fans. The team lacked that this season, and it didn’t get any better when the Fuego started 0-8 and were out of the playoff race before the end of May.
Included in that run was an embarrassing 32-9 loss to Roswell en route to a 4-26 start. That was followed by Wood’s exit and an endless procession of player personnel moves and disastrous pitching performances.
Moving forward, Encinias said she’d like to see things get better with the facility, but knows there’s only so much that can be done.
“I think we all know there’s a limit when it comes to getting things accomplished with a city park,” she said. “We all have to realize we’re not going to gain millions of dollars and get rid of an arroyo and we’re going to have Isotopes stadium here. We’re limited in what we’re doing. Things have gotten so much better the last five years, but this is a city park that’s leased. We’re doing the best we can.”
Fuego notes: Salina can clinch a playoff spot with a win over Santa Fe in Thursday’s finale. A loss eliminates the Stockade from the postseason. … The Fuego have played 331 games since their inception in 2012. They’ve surrendered 2,899 runs — an average of 8.74 per game. … The previous low-water mark in team history was the 2012 season when Santa Fe finished 23-47. That team only gave up 7.6 runs per game, and it also produced the best single-season ERA figure in team history, a 4.74 by Santa Fe High graduate Jerome Romero. He went 4-0 that season. … The league championship team from 2014 gave up 7.2 runs per game, the lowest singleseason figure in team history. … The Fuego pitching staff has thrown just three shutouts in five years, the most recent coming in an 11-0 win over Trinidad last July.