Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Travs ‘stick to the process’ for another victory

- JEFF KRUPSAW

TRAVS 5, NATURALS 4, 1ST GAME

Arkansas Travelers’ catcher Joseph Odom said he wasn’t thinking about being the hero when he came to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning during the first game of Wednesday’s Texas League doublehead­er at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.

“The past couple of games I’ve been scuffling a little bit, swinging at pitches outside my zone,” said Odom, who came into the game hitting .232. “I was just trying to get a good pitch more than anything and try not to do too much.”

Which is exactly what Odom did with runners on first and third, two outs and the game tied against the Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

“Luckily, the barrel found the ball,” he said. “And we won.”

Odom lined a single to left off Naturals reliever Gabe Speier to score Logan Taylor and give the Travelers a 5-4 victory.

Odom was mobbed by teammates, a memorable moment for the 27-year-old catcher, but the first-game victory was simply more of the same for an Arkansas team that is 28-15 and leads the North Division by five

games over the Tulsa Drillers.

Arkansas’ first-half dominance started with a 7-1 start to the season, with six of those victories coming on the road, and Manager Mitch Canham’s team has not slowed down.

“That’s just numbers,” Canham said. “As long as we go about our day, focus on our process, prepare the right way. It’s just being relentless. Each guy’s trying to be a spark plug. Stay in the moment and keep executing.”

A big part of the process is making it difficult for the opponent to get on base, and Travelers pitchers have yielded a league-low 96 walks.

“Our philosophy is controllin­g the strike zone, on the mound and at the plate,”

Canham said. “Trying to stick to the process.”

The Travelers don’t wow with their offensive statistics — they rank last in the Texas League with 196 runs scored (4.6 per game) and are second-to-last with a team batting average of .241 — but it’s their run prevention that has them on top in the standings.

Arkansas’ team ERA is a half run lower than the next stingiest Texas League team.

And while the Travelers don’t score a lot of runs, they score enough.

Wednesday’s first-game victory improved their record to 10-3 in games decided by one run, 22-4 when scoring at least four and 20-5 when scoring first.

Odom said the success of the Travelers’ pitching staff is a source of pride for him.

“I catch a lot more balls than I’ll ever hit,” Odom said. “Those guys have great arms out there. Everyone’s been on top of their games. We’ve been sticking to our game plan, and we’ve been executing.”

It’s the same on the offensive side.

“1 through 9, every guy has a chance to do it,” Odom said. “Everyone brings something different. We have some speed, we have some power. We all have confidence in each other, just try to pass it on to the next guy.”

The Travelers scored first on Wednesday, then rallied from a 4-1 deficit with two runs in the bottom of the third, one run in the sixth to tie and another in the seventh to win.

Part of the game plan, according to Odom and Canham, is getting the starting pitchers to throw strikes and extend their starts.

Canham said Odom did a good job of sticking to the process, working with starting pitcher Ricardo Sanchez and reliever Wyatt Mills, throwing out a runner at second and knocking in the winning run.

“He was present tonight,” Canham said of Odom. “Came up at the right time and drove in the run.”

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