Game 14 Recap: A Good Morning

The last game of the first ever Fireflies' homestand was to be a 11:05 AM start at Spirit Communications Park. Why would a professional baseball team agree to such an early start? Maybe the visitors had to travel a long way. But the RiverDogs were only going back home to Charleston, just barely over 100 miles down I-26. Of course, there are no scheduled off days for the first 2 and a half weeks, so maybe both teams needed a full 24 hours before their next series. From a marketing standpoint, maybe the Fireflies wanted schools to take field trips to the stadium. But with April the month for standardized testing, only one or two schools showed up with small groups. So the crowd was very small as a result, more on that later.

The Fireflies starter was P.J. Conlon, who won the first ever game at Spirit Communications Park six days earlier. Conlon was not dominant, allowing five hits in six innings. But Conlon kept his control throughout, though he had to go many pitches on several batters. The closest the RiverDogs came to scoring on him was when Drew Bridges got a triple after Jeff Diehl was too slow fetching a ball hit down the right field line. But Kevin Kaczmarski was able to help him out when Bridges thought that Kendall Coleman had a sac fly to left by easily throwing out Bridges. Conlon in three starts is now 2-0 with a 1.08 ERA, which as seen in the table below makes him the greatest Firefly of them all.

At the plate, several Firefly hitters did well. But it was Dash Winningham who did the best, getting 3 total bases in 2 at-bats with 3 RBIs and two walks. Winningham, expected to be the power leader of this team, started a bit slow but has come on as of late. My tweets about Dash's success got me retweeted by his brother who also has a great name in Moose. But let's not forget David Thompson, who scored 3 runs and snapped a bit of a cold snap the last few games. Kaczmarski scored the first run and also got a big triple to keep the Fireflies going strong. Despite not doing particularly well in right field, Jeff Diehl finally started to get his bat going with two hits and a RBI.

When Conlon exited this game after the 6th inning, the Fireflies led 7-0. That kept the pressure off Tyler Bashlor, who I got to see for the first time. Despite missing two years due to injury, Bashlor has a great fastball and if he can maintain control could be a surprise success out of the bullpen. Johnny Magliozzi (who by the way plays the role of the pitcher in the Fireflies' intro video) then capped the win with a routine 9th inning. The Fireflies had taken the series over the RiverDogs. While Greenville has a history of taking Columbia's last team, the RiverDogs are probably the Fireflies' chief rival and the interaction between the two team's Twitter accounts this week reflected that. So after losing that opening weekend in Charleston, it was great to win this series.

If there was one negative though, it was the attendance. With school groups mostly not showing up and the Bull Street property still a year or two away from being developed for local businesses to take advantage, the attendance was 1,522. While that was only the third lowest attendance of the day in the SAL, a MiLB team in its first year should do better than that on season tickets alone. Fireflies president John Katz said to ABC Columbia that his goal was 375,000 fans for the season. That would work out to about 5300 per game, which is pretty unrealistic. The Fireflies after the first night did not get an attendance that high the rest of the homestand. The only SAL team that gets over 375,000 for the season regularly is Lakewood in densely populated New Jersey. Greensboro also got over that number after they opened their stadium ten years ago, but they don't get quite that now. A more realistic goal would be 300,000, with 200,000 more likely in future seasons. But right now the Fireflies are barely on track towards my realistic number of 300K on the season. I don't think we're going to be the next Wilmington Waves, which moved after one season due to not being able to secure a stadium aside from UNCW's. But given Hardball Capital's treatment of Savannah, I don't want to see what happens when they don't meet their goals. Columbia needs to do better, and perhaps more fans will come after USC's season ends in May (which is a change from Ray Tanner's teams which kept going in June).

So here is a look at the all-time Firefly player standings, with two weeks and four series in the books:

Player	Position	TB	R	RBI	BB/HBP	SB	CS	0 for 1	SO	Outs	K	R	ER	H	BB/HBP	W	S	L	Score
P.J. Conlon	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	50	11	2	2	17	2	2	0	0	232
Joe Shaw	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	36	16	2	2	9	0	2	0	0	223
David Thompson	3B	23	12	13	8	0	0	34	13	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	183
Chase Ingram	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	48	20	6	5	17	3	1	0	1	171
Vinny Siena	2B	17	12	4	15	0	0	29	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	142
Thomas McIlraith	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	32	8	3	3	2	7	1	0	1	138
Seth Davis	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	30	10	3	3	7	6	0	1	0	127
Tyler Bashlor	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	21	8	1	1	3	5	0	1	0	119
Joe Tuschak	LF	19	4	8	4	0	1	25	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	104
Johnny Magliozzi	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	15	5	3	3	4	0	0	2	0	100
Dash Winningham	1B	14	6	7	6	0	0	35	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	77
J.C. Rodriguez	DH	11	4	7	6	2	0	38	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	64
Kevin Kaczmarski	RF	13	9	3	7	0	2	40	11	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	45
Nicco Blank	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	12	1	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	45
Tyler Badamo	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	33	5	7	7	16	0	1	0	1	45
Kevin Canelon	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	27	13	5	5	10	6	0	0	1	41
Alex Palsha	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	17	10	6	5	5	5	0	1	1	40
Milton Ramos	SS	9	3	7	3	0	0	28	11	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	37
Ivan Wilson	CF	12	4	4	6	1	2	36	16	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	30
Tucker Tharp	RF	8	2	1	1	0	0	11	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	29
Natanael Ramos	C	4	1	1	2	0	0	4	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	26
Craig Missigman	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	23	8	6	6	7	7	0	0	0	23
Tyler Moore	C	7	5	1	3	0	1	21	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	23
Jeff Diehl	DH	6	2	2	6	0	0	22	11	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	13
Vicente Lupo	LF	2	1	1	1	0	0	6	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	7
Jose Garcia	C	3	1	1	2	0	0	10	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5
Christian Montgomery	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	12	5	6	5	5	6	0	0	0	-18
Witt Haggard	P	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	2	3	3	3	3	0	0	2	-58