Saturday night, the Soddies suffered a humiliating loss in their penultimate game of the season which didn’t bode well for those wanting to say goodbye to end the season Sunday. Still, with a chance to earn a series split, they kept it interesting against the Frisco RoughRiders.
After eight scoreless innings, Frisco scored twice in the top of the ninth for a 2-0 victory to end the Soddies’ season on a disappointing note.
Sunday’s loss marked the second straight series loss at Hodgetown to close the season. Coupled with Saturday’s 18-1 loss, the Sod Poodles ended the season showing they had a hard time scoring runs.
“I would say this series was kind of our season in a nutshell,” said TIm Bogar shortly after finishing his first season as Sod Poodles manager. “We played well enough to win two out of our first three games and then we didn’t play very well for two games and got embarrassed. The last game we played well, we just made enough mistakes not to win.”
The result was the Sod Poodles, who had already been eliminated from winning the Texas League South Division second half title, finishing the second half with a 28-40 record and overall with a 58-79 mark. This came a year after they won their second Texas League championship in their first five years of existence.
Sunday’s game might have been the least Hodgetown-type of game all season, at least in terms of offense. The first eight innings were scoreless with both teams squandering what few chances they had to score.
Frisco’s Keyber Rodriguez led off the ninth with a single off Soddies reliever Listher Sosa then stole second and went to third on a balk. Luis Mieses then hit a sacrifice fly to right to score Rodriguez with the game’s first run, then with two outs, Alejandro Osuna hit a towering solo home run to left to make it 2-0.
Roughriders’ reliever Seth Clark came on in the ninth and retired the Sod Poodles in order to end the season.
The loss spoiled the second strong start of the series by left-hander Spencer Giesting, who pitched four scoreless innings before the bullpen worked the rest of the way. Giesting opened the series Tuesday by going seven innings, giving up only five hits and a run to claim the victory in a 5-1 Sod Poodles win.
“I definitely feel confident and feel good about my ability to compete at this level,” said Giesting, who was called up from the Soddies big league parent club Arizona Diamondbacks Class A affiliate in Hillsboro on June 18. “Everybody kind of goes trtough a rough spot at some point through this level and I was able to figure out if I don’t walk guys I’m able to hang at this level, so I’m very confident going into next year. You control what you can control, and you have to understand that there are balls that will go out here that won’t go out anywhere else.”
Giesting wasn’t the only left-hander to start the season strong for the Sod Poodles. Yu-Min Lin pitched eight innings Wednesday, the longest outing for any Soddies starter this season, but got no support after the first inning in a 3-1 loss, which set a negative precedent for the offense for the rest of the series.
Meanwhile, the Soddies struggled at the plate to finish the series, as they didn’t score in the final 14 innings of the season. Their lone score was a solo homer in the fourth inning Saturday by Gavin Conticello, who was the last player called up to Amarillo this season.
“Offensively we really didn’t have a lot of consistency,” Bogar said. “It started early with (Deyvison) De Los Santos being called up, which he needed to be and that’s out job to get these guys moved up. We had (Tim) Tawa and (Andy) Weber her for a short stint and we moved them up. We fell short a little bit with some of the guys.”
For the first time in two years, the Sod Poodles didn’t have outfielder A.J. Vukovich for a series. Vukovich, who played in Amarillo all of 2023 and all but the last week of this season, got called up to Triple-A Reno for the last week of the season.
At the time, Vukovich was not only leading the Texas League with 80 RBIs, but was the Sod Poodles all-time franchise leader in RBIs with 185. In three games with Reno, Vukovich went 3-for-7.
If you blinked, you missed him
In their final bow before saying goodbye for 2024, the Sod Poodles brought back a familiar face from 2023 for one game to open the series Tuesday.
Jordan Lawlar, the No. 1 prospect in the Diamondbacks organization, came back to Amarillo for what literally seemed like a cup of coffee. Lawlar, who has seen his development slowed by injuries to his thumb and hamstring this year, was officially in town on a rehab assignment.
Hitting leadoff to open the series, Lawlar was 0-for-2 and drew a pair of walks. After sitting the next day, he was recalled to Triple-A Reno on Thursday.
Lawlar actually played his first game of the season for the Sod Poodles in the last game of their series at Midland a week earlier, as he went 1-for-5 in a 7-6 loss. All told this season, in 17 games with the Sod Poodles, Reno and the Diamondbacks developmental team in Arizona, Lawlar had only 65 at-bats heading into Sunday and was batting .308.
Breaking new ground
Prior to the game, Jeff Schwartzenburg, who has been the groundskeeper at Hodgetown since the park opened in 2019, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. It was the Sod Poodles’ way of honoring Schwartzenburg, who announced his retirement from his post before the series.