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Club finishes season strong after slow start

NILES – After a tumultuous start to their 2016 campaign, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers are finishing the season strong.

MV has won 30 of their past 49 games since a 5-17 start to the year and despite an 8-6 loss against State College on Thursday now sit at 35-36 with five games remaining.

“In the development side, it was a good season. Of course, we would like to be in the playoffs and have a better record,” Scrappers manager Edwin Rodriguez said. “I think it was a pretty good combination (of winning and developing) for the last month-and-a-half. We’ve been one of the best, if not, the best team in the league, record-wise. Pretty much everything came together after the first three weeks of the season.”

The Scrappers, who displayed strong pitching all season long, needed the offense to step up to get the team on the winning track. Several players had batting averages below the “Mendoza Line” (sub-.200 batting average) in the early part of the year, but many have since rebounded, allowing MV to raise their team average to .248, currently sixth best in the NYPL.

“I’m really, really proud of these guys,” Scrappers hitting coach Justin Toole explained. “Obviously, we didn’t start off as well as we would have liked, (but) these guys kinda embraced the challenge, worked hard and made some really nice improvements from day one until now. The improvement these guys have made, the work that they have done has been really awesome to see and I’m very proud of (them).”

In Thursday’s game, the Scrappers began the first game of their final homestand against State College. The Spikes got off to a quick start, scoring three runs in the top of the first, plus, another run in the second inning.

MV trailed, 8-2, heading into the bottom of the ninth and then made things interesting. Jorma Rodriguez hit a two-run home run, and then, with the bases loaded, Mitch Longo had a two-run double, closing the gap to 8-6.

However, with two outs and runners on second and third base, Gavin Collins popped out to foul territory to end the game. The Scrappers host State College tonight and Saturday before finishing their season on the road in West Virginia for a two-game series.

Between pitchers and position players, MV sent six players to the New York-Penn League All-Star game, including the MVP of that game, Erlin Cerda, who was recently promoted Lake County. As impressive as the pitching has been, the outfield has been equally productive.

“There’s so many guys (that have improved this season)” Toole said. “From Todd Isaacs (to Gabriel Mejia and others). One of the questions I was asked at the beginning of the year, ‘Your outfielders aren’t very big guys. Can you expect some production out of them?’ And then it turns out, we got three outfielders in the all-star game.”

While it is yet to be determined who will be where next year, some of the current MV players will be back for another year at Eastwood Field. For Rodriguez, the best advice he can give to those players is to simply keep playing the game.

“I would say at this point in their career, pretty much every one of them have the talent, the physical talent, to play in the big leagues, eventually,” Rodriguez said. “All they need to do is get the experience, throwing those guys out there and let them play. With experience, a lot of things will come in play. Talent-wise, it’s there.”

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