TRENTON- With the dog days of summer officially up us, as Sirius rises along with the sun each morning, the Trenton Thunder, and the rest of the Eastern League, have struggled to get any momentum. If one has a look around the EL standings, the trend over the last 10 games for each team is to be right around the .500...
TRENTON- With the dog days of summer officially up us, as Sirius rises along with the sun each morning, the Trenton Thunder, and the rest of the Eastern League, have struggled to get any momentum.
If one has a look around the EL standings, the trend over the last 10 games for each team is to be right around the .500 mark. In the Eastern Division, five of the six squads are 5-5 over that period, while Binghamton is the only team over .500 at 7-3. In the Western Division, it is more chaotic, with teams ranging from 3-7 to 7-3.
With the All-Star break long gone, and another 45-plus games to go until the playoffs, it can be tough to get up for games each day. But as Thunder manager Bobby Mitchell says, it is something that his young team needs to be able to do.
"It is the dog days, and you can see it sometimes," Mitchell said. "We are just playing .500 ball right now, if that, and it has been like that ever since the break, or even before the break. We have to try to get on a roll here, and start winning some games in a row, and it snowballs a little bit after that."
"Everybody, individually and as a team, has to be able (to get up for games)," Mitchell said. "Sometimes you don't even know it, but you can see it. You can see it in our play. I didn't think we were very sharp in our play Monday, in the little things, like just throwing the ball around. We were too lackadaisical, and not sharp."
Coming off of a tough weekend series with Reading, which the two teams split, Mondays' 11-4 loss to Portland, in which the Thunder played poorly in almost all aspects, was an eye opener to the team. If they don' play with energy each game, that is what can happen.
"It may have been a little bit of a let down," Mitchell said. "I know we take it kind of personal when it is all Phillies fans here, and so you want to play tough. Plus, you are playing the first place team. There is always that little bit of a let down possibility, and it did seem like that Monday night."
"But that is not an excuse," Mitchell said. "We have no excuses if we don't play sharp. There are going to be games that aren't as good, but we have to push ourselves. This is professional baseball, and you are a professional. You have to fight through that stuff."
One of the most important parts of baseball is the mental aspect to the game, and fighting through the dog days of the schedule is something that has to be learned.
"Yeah, it is," Mitchell said of the mental game. "It is huge. It is a grind. When you start getting to the last 50 or so games, it is natural to start looking toward the end too soon. But that is a lot of at-bats."
"I have been there," Mitchell said. "Where you are getting towards that last two or three weeks of the season, and you are hitting close to .300. Sometimes you press. But you are also thinking that the season is almost over. So you either push yourself and you hit .300, or you hit below .300. It is a mental thing for sure."
Trenton is just 7-9 in July, coming into the day game series finale with Portland Wednesday, and first baseman Dante Bichette Jr. hopes that the team can start to gear up for an August push towards the playoffs.
"We were plating such good baseball in June, that I think we were bound to come down from that at some point," Bichette Jr. said. "But I think we are right at the end of that down part. But the good thing is, even when we are not playing well, we are still winning games."
"That is how you have to be if you want to be a winning team," Bichette Jr. said. "The fact that we are winning games is a good sign, and I am sure we are going to get hot again."
POKEMON GO COMES TO TRENTON THUNDER
Local product Mike Ford, who grew up in Montgomery before attending the Hun School and Princeton University, was on the Thunder roster for the first time in his career Wednesday.
The first baseman is coming off of surgery that had him sidelined for three months. After starting the year at Tampa, he played four games on a rehab assignment with Staten Island, before he was put on the Thunder roster.
Ford will travel with the team to New Hampshire, after Trenton beat Portland 7-4 Wednesday to win the series. At 59-38, the Thunder hope to put some distance between them and Hartford over the next three weeks, before a lengthy 12-game home stand in August that could give Trenton the final boost it needs to lock up a playoff spot.
Contact Sean Miller at seanmillertrentontimes@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheProdigalSean