Ballou on Baseball: July 11, 2023

Former Dodgers, Pirates and Rockies manager Jim Tracy made his first visit to Polar Park last weekend and was impressed.

There is a disclaimer here — WooSox manager Chad Tracy is Jim’s son, so he might be a bit prejudiced. Still, throughout his long baseball career, Jim Tracy was known for honesty, so in regards to his weekend in Worcester we will give him the benefit of the doubt.

“You put another deck on it,” he said of the ballfield, “and it’s a major league park.”

Jim Tracy is 67 and broke into pro baseball in 1977. He played two years in the National League with the Cubs and seven years in the minors, so he knows ballparks, old and new.

“When I was playing Double-A in the Texas League,” he recalled, “I distinctly remember that in Amarillo — that was the Padres Double-A club — I remember playing first base with a mouthguard on. I also remember a lot of places where we were playing under some very low candlepower.

“The standards have changed so much. Every park may not be Polar Park but they are all so much better now. Organizations get to a point where they’ve invested so many millions in this player, or in that player, that they don’t want them playing on a goat patch.”

Jim Tracy was 31 when he became a manager at Class A Peoria in 1987. By 1994 he was at Triple-A Ottawa, managing for the Expos. Ottawa is pretty far north, you might know.

“On Opening Day we got snowed out,” he recalled. “There were five inches of snow. The next day when we played — as a coach, manager or whatever — I don’t know that I was ever colder than I was out there standing in the third base coaching box.”

Things got better with time. He got his first full-time managerial job in sunny Los Angeles at the end of the 2000 season then moved on to Pittsburgh and Colorado. Even if the thermometer readings are low, it is always warmer in the big leagues.

There have been just five father-son manager relationships in the long history of major league baseball. Given Chad Tracy’s performance since he arrived in town last season, the Tracys could be the sixth. Jim Tracy has a way of developing managers, even if they are not all in the family.

His 2004 Dodgers team, for instance, included Alex Cora at second base, David Ross catching and Dave Roberts in the outfield.

Polar Park is a great place, one upper deck away from being a big-league ballpark, and a long ways from the bad hops in Amarillo and snowstorms in Ottawa.

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TRIPLE-A TRIVIA

1. Who is the only batter to hit more than one grand slam in a Worcester uniform?

2. What is the WooSox pitching record for fewest strikeouts in a regulation game?

Answers below.

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CATCHING UP WITH….

Right-handed pitcher Brandon Brennan, who worked 32 games for the 2021 WooSox and went 1-2, is with Dos Laredos of the Mexican League. He is having a strong season with a 9-3 record in 14 starts.

That is just a little better than teammate Kevin McCarthy, another alum from the 2021 WooSox. McCarthy is 6-5 for Dos Laredos with a nifty 3.04 ERA in 13 starts.

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Kyle Barraclough is in some pretty good company to begin his WooSox career. Barraclough won each of his first three starts in a Worcester uniform, joining Brayan Bello as the only WooSox pitchers to do that. Bello went 3-0 with a 3.18 ERA in May of 2022. Barraclough is 3-0, 2.12 to date. … Along similar lines, Pablo Reyes is the first Worcester batter to hit home runs in his first two games for the WooSox. He became the 10th WooSox hitter with a home run in his Worcester debut on July 4 then followed it up with another one the next game. … There has been a lot going on offensively for the WooSox this season, so the highlights have been rapid-fire. A recent one worth noting happened on July 5 when Bobby Dalbec became the first Worcester batter to hit 20 home runs in a season. Christin Stewart had the record previously with 19 last year. The last Red Sox Triple-A batter with more than 20 in a season was Josh Ockimey for the 2019 PawSox. He had 25 that year.

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TRIVIA ANSWERS

1. Franchy Cordero is the only WooSox hitter with more than one career grand slam for the team. He hit two in the same season, 2022. One was on April 8, the other on August 19.

2. Worcester pitchers recorded just two strikeouts during their recent July 7^th victory over Syracuse at Polar Park, 7-3. WooSox hurlers have had only two strikeouts in two previous games, but both were part of a doubleheader.

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John Schreiber’s return to Worcester allowed him to join the short list of players who have been with the WooSox for all three of their seasons. Others on that list are Jarren Duran, Kaleb Ort, Christian Arroyo, Durbin Feltman, Kutter Crawford, Ryan Fitzgerald and Ronaldo Hernandez. … A nod in the direction of WooSox pitching coach Paul Abbott for a huge turnaround in the team’s moundwork. After Worcester’s 12-10 loss to Rochester on June 3 the staff ERA was 5.63. It hit the All-Star break at 5.10. In 27 games leading up to the break, the WooSox’ team ERA was 3.90. Same with batting coach Rich Gedman. Worcester’s team average on May 17 was .250. Since then the WooSox are hitting .270 as a team and scoring an average of six runs a game. … For the Syracuse homestand Worcester batted .296 as a team with 25 extra base hits. More than half of them (13) were home runs. … No surprise here, but Chad Tracy is a big Dalbec fan. “He knows it only takes one mistake for him to impact a game just like that,” the manager said. “You can change it with one mistake and he’s done that quite a bit. The numbers speak for themselves.” Yes, they do. The WooSox are 22-9 this season when Dalbec has an RBI, 24-31 when he does not. … Since June 10, Worcester is 14-2 when Enmanuel Valdez is in the starting lineup.

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THE ROAD AHEAD…

The International League schedule resumes Friday with the WooSox playing at Jacksonville. Worcester has three games there, its second series all-time with the Jumbo Shrimp. The WooSox opened the 2022 season there and went 5-1 in a six-game series.

Worcester does not return to Polar Park until July 25.

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Former Red Sox manager Joe Morgan was at Polar Park for Saturday’s game and sat with Jim Tracy in one of the upstairs boxes. It was like Venus aligning with Mars. Both men took were mid-season managerial hires who took their teams from out-of-contention to the playoffs, the two most successful in-season changes in major league history.

The 1988 Sox were nine games out of first place in the AL East when Morgan succeeded John McNamara on July 14. Boston went 12-0 after the change, then 19-1 overall and won the AL East.

Tracy succeeded Clint Hurdle in Colorado in late May of 2009 with the Rockies at 18-28. They were 14 games out of first place, then went 74-42 under Tracy to finish second behind the Dodgers, just three games back, qualifying as a Wild Card team.