by Roberta Umor, Yuma Sun

April 14, 2012: Yuma, AZ — It looks like improvement, but it smells like the same old Bulldozer Balderdash, the Yuma Yuck, the dregs of defeat and the stench of the cellar.

Okay, okay, so the Dozers aren’t in last place… yet.  And yes, they swept three from Kalamazoo.  When did that last happen?  But their wins are miraculous, unexpected and totally out of left field (where David “No-Good” Goode stroked his game-winning, two-out double in the top of the ninth in the opener against Kalamazoo), while their losses are mundane, expected and very, very familiar.

Maybe it was all the hoopla that greeted the team on Bulldozer Day for the first home game of the season.  35,000 fans showed up to cheer their team, who at that point had the very un-Yuma-like record of five wins and five losses.  Yes, believe it: For one brief, shining moment, the Dozers were playing .500 ball.

Until they came home.

Yuma lost its first two games at home this season by a combined score of 10-0.  Yup, zero, as in zip, zilch, and you been zapped.  35,000 faithful were disappointed when Yuma lost 3-0, but if they’d read the signs in their tea leaves, they’d have seen the future coming.  The Dozers had a grand total of two hits in their home opener.  Two! Both singles.  The next night, they doubled their total: four singles.  The Tempe Knights hammered Dozer pitchers on the night for 10 hits and 7 runs.  A rout, a rubout, a total humiliation.  30,000 faithful departed with nothing to believe in.

Instead of burying the past in the pre-game ceremonies, the Yuma management ought to have paid more attention to the present.  Sure, new GM Mayberry is looking pretty smart, trading away Wunderkind Carlos Guerera and offering first baseman Yoichi Inoue a fat new contract.  Inoue is swinging a hot bat and Guerera… well, he ain’t hittin’ like no WonderKid, that’s for sure.

Guerera’s numbers?  A batting average of .277 with just 1 HR and 4 RBI.  Yoichi, meanwhile, is leading the Dozers with 5 HR and 10 RBI.

We know it’s early yet, the GM knows it, even the fans know it.  No one took seriously their spring training record of 8-16, better than anyone expected.  But fans familiar with the Fates of fable paid more attention to the six consecutive losses at the end of spring training.  Those six games smelled like Dozer doo-doo.  Outscored 51-7 and shut out three times (once by the utterly unbelievable score of 19-zip), those Dozers stunk in ways the Yuma faithful have come to recognize, if not appreciate.  Yuma’s Boisterous Boys of Spring will inevitably become the Silenced Slumpers of Summer.

Were those six games the harbingers of losses to come?  Of course.  All defeats foreshadow more defeats; that’s unavoidable.  But did those six losses tell us something about our team’s future?  In broad strokes, yes, we learned they will lose, they will be humbled, they will be shamed and the losing will continue unabated.

But, heh, we already knew that.  We remember last year, in spite of the GM’s silly ritual burying of the past.  Oh, the mighty bulldozers (generously donated by Lee-Allen Builders) plowed up the desert floor and put heaps of dirt on top of the team’s scorebooks from last season, but burying books is not the same as erasing memory – not for the players, not for the fans.

We remember.

So if we’re looking for the true harbinger, the moment that illuminates the future, the game that should have flashed the message in bright lights before us that these early victories were illusory desert mirages, chimeras sent to tease us into believing once more when we should have buried our faith in those desert holes along with the scorebooks, then we’ll need to look not at a loss – too obvious, too expected – but at a victory.  Ah!  When victory still stinks like stink of defeat, that’s what we’re after.

That would be Game 5 of the 2012 season: Yuma at Kalamazoo.  Yes, the same Badgers team the Dozers swept.  How can a sweeping victory reveal a pattern of defeat?  LIke this:

In the fourth, young star-in-the-making Denny Parkinson was injured legging out an infield hit.  Five weeks for a strained oblique, whatever the hell that is.  Five weeks!  On a hit!  There went the future.

Then, two rain delays in the fifth inning.  Two!  Could the Fates speak more clearly?  The game lasted 4 hours and 58 minutes.  It’s gonna be a loooooonnnnnnng season, friends.

And finally, if you needed more signs of the train wreck to come, 26-year-old right-hander Pedro Álvarez got the win.  Just terrible, because he didn’t deserve it.  He won because the offense rallied for six runs in the top of the seventh after Pedro had allowed four runs to score in the bottom of the sixth.

Badgers batterer Joel Swedlove tied the game with a two-run dinger to start the sixth.  Pedro was waved in to keep the game close.  He gave up a double to the first batter he faced, walked the next one, hit the third with a pitch and walked the fourth, forcing home the lead run.

His fate was sealed.

Now, if you think this is a bit harsh on a young pitcher, if you assume he was having some sort of mechanical problem that day, think again.  He eventually fanned the side!  Three big Ks for Pedro – the last two to end the inning, on three pitches each!  There’s nothing wrong with the kid’s mechanics.  He’s overpowering… when his head’s in the game.  It took walking a runner home to wake him up from his bullpen nap.  He was ahead or even in the count on every fair ball hit off him, which suggests that he relaxes, loses focus and grooves pitches late in the count.  If he can’t fan you in three, he’ll walk you in six.  The later the count, the poorer a pitcher Pedro becomes.

After striking out the fifth batter he faced in the sixth, Pedro proceeded to give up a two-run single on a 2-1 count, an infield single on an 0-1 pitch, and then forced a final run home with his second walk of the inning.  The walk woke him up and he fanned the next two on six pitches combined.

In the seventh, Pedro got the first two batters out on two pitches: a fly ball to right and groundball to third.  The next batter singled and the one following walked (Pedro’s third walk in two innings).  He got the final batter to ground out to third on the first pitch he threw.

So the pattern is evident.  Pedro is one terror on the mound early in the count, and a batting average’s best friend late in the count.  Here are the numbers for the two innings Pedro pitched in game 5:

• Early in the count: 7 batters faced, 2 singles, 2 strikeouts, 2 ground outs, 1 fly out and no runs scored.  ERA = 0.00.
• Late in the count: 8 batters faced, 1 single, 1 double, 1 HBP, 4 BB, 1 strikeout and 4 runs scored.  ERA = 109.09.

Pedro Álvarez is the Jekyll and Hyde of Yuma.

In his most recent appearance, Pedro earned the save in Game 9 as Yuma edged Omaha 3-2.  He retired the side in the ninth, giving up only a two-out single.  What was the count when he yielded the hit? 3-2, of course.  The first batter of the inning grounded out on a 1-2 pitch, the second fanned on four pitches, and the final batter of the game chopped the second pitch to the shortstop for the game-ending force at second.  Hyde kept Jekyll at bay this time.

But to the Yuma faithful, the Sibyl has spoken, the tea leaves have been read, the numbers all add up and the planets are in alignment about this: Earning their fifth victory against the Kalamazoo Badgers was a very, very bad sign for Yuma.  It stunk just like losing.