Thunder swept away by Curve in ELCS
ALTOONA, PA. » Zack Zehner sat in front of his locker inside a somber visiting clubhouse and couldn’t help but feel empty despite a recordsetting season.
Zehner and his Thunder teammates were left to pack their bags and reflect on missed opportunities while the victorious cheers bellowed from the home locker room.
The Thunder were swept in the Eastern League Championship Series for the second consecutive season following a 4-2 setback against Altoona in Game 3 here at Peoples Natural Gas Field on Thursday night.
“It’s definitely not the way we wanted to finish,” Zehner said. “We had accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish up until this point. This was kind of like the last thing we wanted to do as club that we had our eyes set on since Day 1. It’s always bittersweet when you do a lot of great things, but you don’t finish the way you wanted to.”
That, for manager Bobby Mitchell, was most frustrating. The skipper guided the club to 179 wins — the highest two-year total in team history — but was searching for answers as to why the Thunder are 0-6 in ELCS games.
“Is it something that I did or didn’t do?,” he asked. “I think we’re always well prepared and ready to go, we just ran into some pretty good pitching from their team. We made some mistakes pitching-wise today that they took advantage of.”
Mitch Keller, ranked as the Pirates’ No. 2 prospect by MLB Pipeline, dazzled for a second straight playoff start on his way to playoff MVP honors.
The 21-year-old righthander stumped the Thunder for 7.1 innings, limiting them two a pair of runs, both in the second, while striking out eight and walking one.
Keller finished his two postseason starts with 19.1 innings of two-run ball. He allowed just five hits and fanned 12.
“They pitched us tough,” said Zehner, who went 0-for-4 on Thursday night, 0-for-12 in the series. “It was one of those things where they pitched really well and had a few timely hits. It was hard to get the momentum going.”
Jin-De Jhang delivered the sucker punch with a three-run triple in the fifth inning off Will Carter.
The Thunder starter navigated the first four innings without allowing a run, but lost his command in the fifth. He walked two in the frame, including a bases loaded free pass to force in a run and fell behind Jhang two balls and one strike. Then he lost the lead. “They had a lot of stuff going for them,” outfielder Rashad Crawford said. “I feel like we hit a lot of balls hard, but right at them. They found more holes than we did and they were able to capitalize on key situations to help them win.”
Trailing 4-2 in the eighth, the first two batters reached against Keller before he froze Jeff Hendrix with a breaking ball and exited after 102 pitches to a standing ovation.
But Johnny Hellweg walked Thairo Estrada on four pithes to load the bases before wiggling out of the trouble by getting Billy Fleming on a check swing in front dribbler in front of the plate and Dante Bichette Jr. on grounder to short.
“We were one hit away from changing the tide of the game,” Zehner said. “In all three games, it was one hit away. That’s tough because everybody wanted to be that guy to do it and it didn’t pan out.”
The Thunder grabbed a 2-0 lead against Keller in the second when they successfully got a runner in from third on Zehner’s RBI ground out. Crawford (2for-3) followed with a runscoring bloop single to left.
Nick Solak left the game in the second inning after he was hit on the hand while trying to bunt and was replaced by Ryan McBroom. Mitchell said Xrays were negative on Solak’s hand.
The Thunder are now 3-4 all-time in the ELCS.
“We haven’t been able to finish the last two years, which is really disappointing,” Mitchell said. “I thought that going into the playoffs record-wise we had the better team throughout the season, we just didn’t perform like it.”
Still, this was a recordbreaking season.
The Thunder matched the franchise record for victories in a season with 92 and set a new standard for winning percentage (.657).
The pitching staff recorded a club record 2.83 ERA with 20 shutouts and threw the fourth no-hitter in franchise history in Game 3 of the ELDS against Binghamton.
“We were one of the greatest teams in affiliate history,” Zehner said. “We did so many great things this entire season and it feels like it was such a long time ago, but there were a lot of guys who got a lot better and made their debut in the big leagues, so there are a lot of positive things to look at.”
Yet at the end of 140 regular-season games, and seven playoff contests, this one stings.
“It was a good year, but I’d give all those records away to win a championship and bring a championship to Trenton,” Mitchell said. “That’s why I think it’s really disappointing. We had a good year, we didn’t have a great year because we didn’t finish it.”