The Arkansas Travelers won five consecutive games during a road trip through Texas last week thanks to consistent hitting and solid starting pitching.
The Travs got neither in the first game of a six-game homestand Wednesday night in a 5-1 loss to the Frisco RoughRiders.
Frisco scored all five of its runs in the first two innings off Arkansas starter Orangel Arenas, and Frisco starter Alex Gonzalez led a pitching effort that held Arkansas to one first-inning run and four total hits while ending its season-long winning streak in front of an announced crowd of 4,997 at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.
"Arenas wasn't quite as sharp as he usually is, and offensively we didn't respond real well when we fell behind," Arkansas Manager Phillip Wellman said.
The loss came after the Travs hit .341 during a five-game winning streak that included two victories at Frisco and a three-game sweep at Midland. Travs starters also combined to allow five earned runs during the streak, and their entire staff had a 2.80 ERA.
Nothing was all that sharp Wednesday, starting with Arenas. Ryan Strausborger led off the first with a single and Arenas hit Patrick Cantwell with a pitch and gave up a single to Tomas Telis to load the bases. Trever Adams drove in a run with a forceout, and Cantwell scored on a wild pitch to make it 2-0.
Jake Skole singled in the second, Strausborger reached on a throwing error by third baseman Kaleb Cowart and Cantwell drove in both with a double. Cantwell scored on a groundout to give Frisco a 5-0 lead.
Arenas (5-5) settled after the second and didn't allow another run, but enough damage had been done as he took his third consecutive loss. Arenas was 4-1 with a 1.91 ERA on June 8 but has lost four of his past five starts and seen his ERA rise to 3.41.
"I thought he wasn't aggressive as he usually is," Wellman said. "We talked to him after the second, and he started throwing strikes a little bit more and he started throwing up zeroes."
The Travs' offense couldn't mount anything against Gonzalez, whom the Travs battered for five runs on eight hits June 26 in a victory at Frisco. The only run Gonzalez gave up Wednesday came in the first when Maikol Gonzalez walked and scored on Zach Borenstein's sacrifice fly.
One bit of good news for the Travs came from who drove in their only run Wednesday. Borenstein played left field for the Travs for the first time since May 24 after spending the past five weeks at Class AAA Salt Lake.
Borenstein hit .256 with 2 home runs and 22 RBI in 30 games with the Bees, which he thought was good enough for him to stay at that level, but was told after Monday's game at Las Vegas that he would be rejoining the Travs.
In his first game back he drove in the Travs' only run and had their only extra-base hit, a leadoff double in the fourth, before being stranded.
"I was pretty upset when they told me I was coming back down here, because I didn't think I wasn't performing well," Borenstein said. "But, it is what it is. I don't think it necessarily means I'm any further away from the bigs than I was before."
Borenstein said he's energized to hit in a Travs lineup that doesn't look much like the one he left in May. The biggest difference has been the addition of designated hitter Mike Bianucci, who went 0 for 3 on Wednesday but hit .478 with 2 home runs and 7 RBI during the winning streak.
"It looks good on paper," Wellman said of the lineup. "I think it's a pretty potent lineup right now."
Sports on 07/03/2014