Cedar Rapids Kernels will have to win on road to win Midwest League first-half championship

CEDAR RAPIDS — If the Cedar Rapids Kernels are going to win the first-half championship in the Midwest League’s Western Division, they’re going to have to do it on the road.

It’s two weeks in Michigan for the ballclub after Sunday afternoon’s 8-1 loss to Lake County at Veterans Memorial Stadium. That’d be six games at Great Lakes and six at Lansing, in that order.

Cedar Rapids is 1 1/2 games behind Wisconsin for first place in the division, as it seeks an 11th-straight MWL playoff berth. The first half officially ends in the middle of a home series against Peoria following this long jaunt east.

“Going on the road is never easy,” said Kernels Manager Brian Dinkelman. “We’re always better at home than on the road. But we’ll go out there, give a better performance hopefully, have better pitching and defense, get some timely hitting and see if we can win some ballgames on this road trip.”

The first thing to worry about is putting together a game significantly improved from the final two of this six-game series.

The Kernels allowed 10 runs in the top of the first inning in an 11-3 loss Saturday night. It was equally rough here, as Kernels pitchers walked seven and Kernels fielders committed six errors.

Lake County, which is in first place in the Eastern Division, scored four runs in the third inning to pull away, despite not getting a hit. The mistakes ran the gamut.

There were fielding miscues, throwing miscues, errant pickoff throws, pitchers not covering first base on grounders to the right side. Yuck.

“We got off to a tough start yesterday with that 10-run first, and today wasn’t very good, either,” Dinkelman said. “A lot of careless mistakes, a lot of free extra bases that we gave them that put us behind again today. We could never catch up. So, yeah, these last two games have not gone our way, for sure.”

The manager was asked how he addresses the mental mistakes, in particular.

“You talk to the guy individually, then it’s a teaching point for the whole team, too,” he said. “Whether it’s during the game or after the game or the next day, you talk to the guy, ask them what they were thinking, what happened, what they think they did to cause it to go wrong. You address it and make it a teaching point for everyone, so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”

Considering Cedar Rapids has a 30-20 record, you haven’t seen many games like these last two.

“We’ve been fortunate that stretches like this haven’t happened often,” Dinkelman said. “Regroup tomorrow, take the day off and hopefully have a better game Tuesday to start off the road trip.”

Infielder Keoni Cavaco saved the bullpen a bit by throwing a scoreless ninth inning. He’s done so three times this season and hasn’t given up a run in his two total innings.

So there’s that.

There is more bad news on the injury front for the team, as starting pitcher C.J. Culpepper has been placed on the seven-day injured list with a right forearm strain. He joins everyday infielder Danny DeAndrade (ankle) and everyday outfielder Gabriel Gonzalez (back) there.

Dinkelman said he wasn’t sure if the club would get a replacement for Culpepper. The Kernels already have had two starting pitchers promoted to double-A Wichita (Zebby Matthews and Andrew Morris).

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