Monday, August 25, 1997

Pitching never gave the team a chance this season

By LANCE FLEMING

Staff Writer

When Barry Jones was named manager of the Abilene Prairie Dogs this past offseason, he promised that pitching would be the backbone of the 1997 ballclub.

Instead it was the pitching that broke the backs of the 1997 club.

The Prairie Dogs' pitching staff, which had the worst ERA in the league (6.57) and allowed the most walks (441), was the worst in the team's three-year existence, and one of the worst in the 4-year-old Texas-Louisiana League.

And that led directly to Abilene finishing the season with a record of 36-52. That after going 67-32 last year and then sweeping a pair of playoff series.

Jones went through 17 pitchers and 13 of them started. Contrast that with the 1996 staff that used just 11 pitchers and only six starters and you can see where the Prairie Dogs' season went wrong.

"We had a lot of veterans last year, and that's something we didn't have this year," Jones said. "You expect veterans to know how to pitch and show the young guys what to do. We had young guys, and while I'm sure they did the best that they could, it wasn't good enough."

The leading winners on the club were Mark Hampton with eight wins and Troy Dean Conkle with seven. And the lowest ERA among pitchers with at least 40 innings was a 3.54 by Louis Maberry, who was traded to Amarillo with one month to go in the season.

When asked to rate his pitching staff's performance this season, Jones didn't hesitate.

"I'd give the pitching an 'F' from the beginning," Jones said. "At times the pitchers kept us in games, but at times they took us out of games. It's nothing negative towards those guys on the pitching staff, because I like tham all. But it's not whether I like them or not, it's whether they got the job done. And this year, for the most part, they didn't get the job done. It's as simple as that. People might say that's being too hard. But, no, it's just being honest."

And that leads to the inevitable question of whether or not Jones will return. He is, after all, the man who assembled this team - good and bad.

"I can say right now that, yeah, I'll be back next year," Jones said. "But that's right now. I don't know exactly what the winter will bring. So based on that, I can't give a definite answer."

But if he does return to Abilene, Jones will have one thing on the brain: Pitching, pitching and more pitching.

"My main objective next year when I start putting the team together will be veteran pitching and a power hitter or two," Jones said. "We had enough speed and line-drive hitters to get the job done. But pitching, I know, will be the first priority."

Offensively, the Prairie Dogs weren't bad with a lineup that included the league's fifth-leading hitter in Jason McClure (.373), Darryl Monroe (.338, 10 HR, 39 RBI), Jay Andrews (.311, 8 HR, 64 RBI) and Manny Gagliano (.317, 7 HR, 49 RBI).

They also had five players - Andrews, Scott Bethea, Jason Keith, McClure and Monroe - who had 20 or more steals on the season.

But they lacked a true power hitter, such as Tyler's Chris Cassels, Rio Grande Valley's Bryan Warner or Alexandria's John O'Brien, all of whom hit more than 20 home runs. Cassels and Warner, in fact, broke O'Brien's league home run record of 25 and Cassels now holds it with 29 homers.

Monroe led Abilene with 10 homers, and he did all that in just eight weeks of work after signing just before the all-star break.

"We need a power hitter or two," Jones admitted. "We ended up having enough speed, and our line-drive guys were good enough. We hit the ball pretty well, even though we fell off a little bit at the end."

The team's defense was another area where Jones was less-than-thrilled with the production he received. Abilene committed 136 errors on the season, or 19 more than the Dogs made last year in 12 fewer games.

"We didn't play great defense when we weren't hitting," Jones said. "We'd take an at-bat to defense, or bad defense to the plate. We made some great plays in the field, but it was the routine plays that cost us a few games."

The season's final evaluation is of Jones himself, who, in his first year as a professional manager found it was a little difficult to separate the player in him from the manager in him.

"I think I would give myself a 'C-minus,' because on the field I had too much player in me," Jones said. "And a lot of times a lot of people saw that come out in me. There are boundaries as a manager, and I crossed those several times. That hurt me as a person, because it didn't do me any good to do things like that. But as a manager before the game, I'd give myself an 'A-plus' because I worked hard. But in the second half of the season I settled down, because I realized I made the same mistakes some of our guys were making when I was their age."

And it was that age thing, as well as the poor pitching, that proved to be Abilene's downfall in 1997.

"I thought we could go out and compete and try to defend the championship we won last year," Jones said. "I was confident going into the season, but right away we found a lot of holes on offense, defense and the pitching staff.

"We were a young team; we were young everywhere, but especially on the pitching staff," Jones said. "A lot of times we looked like we really didn't know how to play the game."