Gary Green

The Altoona Curve fell yet again to the Richmond Flying Squirrels courtesy of a 2-1 loss in front of 4,028 fans at PNG Field Sunday afternoon.

The loss put the finishing touches on a lackluster first half of the season for the Curve where they amassed a 30-39 record, including being shut out 12 times.

“We’ve got to get our hitting figured out a little bit,” Altoona acting manager Gary Green said. “We’ve got to do better when we get guys in scoring position, either moving them from second to third with no outs, or getting them home, bumping the ball forward and runners on third with less than two outs, and we have to start stringing better at bats together when we can get on base.”

While the offense has lacked productivity throughout the season, the pitching staff has come a long way from struggling at the beginning of the season.

“I think that the pitching has been pretty good for us,” Green said. “It’s given us a chance most of the time, especially as we’ve gotten to the back half of this year, struggled a little bit early, but once the starters have built innings, the bullpen guys have settled in. That’s given us a chance to win games.”

The staff certainly has done its fair share of helping finish the first half of the season on good footing, and it has put the team in the right position, but it’s been far from complementary baseball.

On Sunday, the Curve were able to score the first earned run off Johnstown native Braxton Roxby since April 26 with a ninth inning double by Nick Cimillo that scored Termarr Johnson.

It was too little, too late, and the inning ended with a Sammy Siani groundout in the next at bat.

Offensive woes have been the Achilles heel for Altoona this season and have continued to hamper the winning ways of the Curve.

“To me, some of it’s approach and what guys are trying to do. Maybe I don’t spend as much time in the cage as our hitting guys do, but some of it’s approach. We have to have tougher at bats, especially with two strikes,” Green said. “We’ve got to be able to grind and foul pitches off with two strikes, as opposed to just taking cold third strikes. So the at bats have to get tougher, especially when we get the two strikes, we’ve got to start bumping the ball forward more.”

The good news for Green and company is the second half of the season is a great opportunity for the team to hit the reset button and forget about the offensive issues plaguing the team.

“It gives you a chance to start over again and flush everything that happened good and bad in the first half and rejuvenate you a little bit,” Green said. “Hopefully, we can get it going and just pick up and start playing better baseball in terms of times offensively, because I think defensively, we’ve had some hiccups, but for the most part we’ve caught the ball, and we’ve pitched OK. We’ve pitched good enough to win some more games, so we just got to get better offensively and got to have better at bats.”

On Saturday

The Altoona bullpen hurled nine scoreless innings to take down Richmond 1-0 Saturday night.

Blake Townsend and Finneas Del Bonta-Smith each tossed three shutout innings while Justin Meis threw two and Beau Burrows slammed the door in the ninth for the save.

Changes coming

The Pirates organization released both Del Bonta-Smith and infielder Imanol Vargas from their contracts prior to Sunday’s game.

Del Bonta-Smith was 2-1 with a 5.47 ERA in 15 games this season for the Curve. He threw three shutout innings in Altoona’s win Saturday night.

Vargas appeared in 36 games for the Curve, hitting .204 with one home run and three doubles.

The moves set the stage for what should be a bevy of moves ahead of the series against Chesapeake.

Up next

Altoona will head to Chesapeake to take on the Baysox to start the second half of the season. Wilber Dotel will get the nod on the mound for the first game of the series while a starter has yet to be named for Chesapeake.