Well just like that Opening Day for the RailCats came and went. This was the 7th straight season that the RailCats have lost on Opening Day, but that doesn’t mean they will lose the series. In 2023 the RailCats dropped Opening Day to the Winnipeg Goldeyes but went on to win the next 2 games.

To pull off a topic for the second, if that’s okay with you, the reader, last season I tried 10 observations of the game, but in a 9-inning game, it just turned into a recap of what happened in each inning with a thought at the end. This year, I want to try and make it more of a post-game recap, but with more of my thoughts on the game and not bore you with a play-by-play of what happened. So, without further ado, here are Kyle’s Thoughts!

My first thought is who runs the Milkmen’s X account and why is the RailCats and Milkmen game the only game where Pointstreak wasn’t run. I like to double-check my stats, unlike my spelling, and when I can’t get my box score at the end, I feel like I haven’t showered in a week if I give out the wrong stats. Going back to who runs the Milkmen’s X page, how hard is it to go onto paint.net or even Word and come up with the starting lineup? Do the Milkmen fans not care to know what the lineup will be? Also, I like to keep score in a book, so knowing the lineup beforehand makes life a little better. Enough of the pregame soapbox.

Leading up to this game, we were all wondering what this RailCats team would look like; most people would say, “Well, this team looks like the team from last year, with a few new players in the mix.” I would agree, but here is what I saw different at the beginning; towards the end, the old habits reared their heads.

In that 1st inning, we saw some things that Coach Jacobs talked to Chuck and me about, and that was plate patience. Peralta, Allgeyer, and Ultsch all had at least 2 strikes on them; Ultsch was the only one to get a hit, which was the first RailCats hit of the season. Suozzi was the only player in that 1st inning to see only 1 pitch before he grounded out to third base. We saw Deyni continue where he left off, with the RailCats coming out of the gate striking out one and giving up 1 hit. We also saw Olivier Basabe show why he is called “Brick Wall” Basabe, as he made a tough backhanded snag and threw across the diamond to get Adolfo out by a hair at 1st.

Like I said, I’m not going to follow the game like a typical post-game recap, but instead, I will talk about the offense first and will get into pitching and defense second. To start the 2nd inning, we saw why Baron Radcliff could be dangerous at the SteelYard, being a left-handed bat with great power, as he opened the scoring with a Baron Bomb to straight center field, and it was a no-doubt bomb. But what I saw with Baron at the 1st at-bat and what the rest of the 4 other at-bats have me a little concerned, but not surprised.

Baron is going to give you 3 options: he will either hit a bomb, soft contact, or strikeout. He has a very powerful swing, and he knows it. If he connects, it’ll go for days, but sometimes taking the approach of just making contact with the ball to keep the line moving is all you need. We saw him have the bases loaded with 2 outs, and it was a green light—I’m swinging as hard as I can at anything thrown at me. He has the power, but he needs the control; if he can do that, he will be very successful.

But what I saw at the beginning of the game is something to be excited about. In the 3rd, we saw back-to-back singles from Jake Hoover and Elvis Peralta, and with some aggressive baserunning, Hoover moved to 3rd on Peralta’s single. But this next play is what got me excited. Jake Allgeyer hits a SAC fly to right, and Hoover scored, but Peralta, being aggressive but in a smart way, tags first and heads for 2nd, which I believe caught everyone off guard, and he was safe at second. Without that move, when Joe Suozzi hit a single, Peralta would have been at 3rd, but since he was on 2nd instead of 1st, he scored.

Fast forward to the 8th, RailCats down by one. Oliver Basabe would single, Jose Contreras would walk, and this is where hustle pays off. Cooper Edwards in the box, and Lamarr wants to play small ball by having Cooper bunt. He gets one laid down and ran it out as if he didn’t think he was going to be out, and with that hustle, the Milkmen were rushed and an error was caused. Basabe would score, tying the game. The bases would be loaded at this point with 0 outs; this is where I started to see the old habits.

In that 8th inning with 0 outs, the RailCats went down with a strikeout looking by Peralta. Even if you thought it was a ball and it’s close, you can’t go down looking; I’m sorry, that is a cardinal sin in baseball, well, in my eyes. Allgeyer couldn’t get a line drive over the 2nd baseman, which would have scored at least 2 runs, then Ultsch grounded out to short. See, this wasn’t the 1st time the RailCats left the bases loaded; back in the 5th, the RailCats loaded the bases on 2 walks from Peralta and Allgeyer, then Suozzi was hit by a pitch. When Baron came up, it was, “I’m not swinging for the fences, I’m swinging for the moon,” which caused him to overswing and hit a soft ground ball to 2nd.

In the game, the RailCats left 11 runners on, and 5 of them were in scoring position. They walked 4 times, 2 batters were hit, and there were 9 strikeouts. Last year, the issue was moving the line, and they moved it but then would come to a complete stop. The further the game went along, the more they tightened their grip on the bat and lost that calm mojo. But I believe the offense did their job by scoring 4 runs and getting on base, unlike last year, where getting 4 runs felt impossible on most nights. It’s only game one; no need to panic for the offense.

For defensive, outside of the Hoover error which led to 2 runs scoring, I think we will have a solid defensive core. I know some may say, “What about all the wild pitches, and shouldn’t Coop have stopped them?” Well, that’s why it’s called wild pitches. But no, in all reality, once Deyni left the game, pitching became a little shaky. Denson Hull came into the 6th and could only get 2 outs; he walked Otta, and he got Perez to pop out, which at that point seemed impossible as he was 2 for 2 with a solo homerun and a RBI double. Otta tried to steal second base, but Cowboy Coop said this is a no-fly zone and gunned him down. But Hull would walk Santiago and give up a hit to Santiago; after that, Hull would be replaced by Jaycob Acosta. Milwaukee would take the lead on a wild pitch where Acosta and Edwards had their signs mixed up.

Acosta would get out of the inning by striking out Huckstorf; he would pitch in the 7th, giving up 2 walks but turning a nice 1-4-6 double play and striking out Davis. In the 8th, we would see the heat thrower Jacob Coats pitch his 1st live game in over 2 years; he would give up a double to Otta, and Otta would move to third on a wild pitch. Perez would get his 3rd RBI of the game in the form of a sac fly to Peralta in center, bringing in Otta for what would be the game winner. Coats would end his night getting Santiago to ground out, giving up a double to Escala, and striking out Huckstorf.

At the end of the night, the RailCats felt in control of most of the game. The Hoover error started to tip the scale, but the ‘Cats erased that later in the game after the Milkmen made an error. However, it came down to two wild pitches that led to runs and the offense losing their patience at the plate.

The RailCats look to even the series tomorrow at 6pm!

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