There’s no denying it, losing streaks suck, and they take some of the life out of teams when they never seem to end. That has been the case for the St. Paul Saints. Until last night, they had been on a losing skid since August 8.
“The clubhouse is never exactly a fun environment to be in,” said Saints Manager Toby Gardenhire after their tenth straight loss on Tuesday night. “At the same time, our guys are doing a good job. We had a lot of close games in Indianapolis, but it doesn’t make it better.”
St. Paul’s opponents didn’t blow them out during the losing streak. All but one of their losses in this streak came within three runs of their opponents. They just found new ways to lose close games every night. Until they returned home to face the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, who beat them 9-4 on Tuesday – the closest any opponent has come to blowing out the Saints.
But St. Paul’s biggest loss by run deficit created a moment of reflection for the Saints clubhouse.
“You get to a certain point of the year where everyone’s tired, and it’s inevitable everyone’s going to get a little banged up during the season,” said Saints outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr., who was 3-for-3 with a homer in Tuesday night’s game. “So it’s just coming in each day and trying to get yourself ready to win.”
After 13 days and 93 innings of baseball, the Saints snapped their losing streak in a walk-off win over the New York Yankees Triple-A affiliate. All it took was Louie Varland’s first start in a week; Payton Eeles just missing a home run; Gardenhire being ejected after Eeles, his first hitter, missed that home run; Diego A. Castillo’s first career grand slam; and an Anthony Prato walk-off single to beat out a five-man infield.
“That was definitely the first time that’s happened to me,” Prato said regarding the RailRidders’ five-man infield. “Honestly, the first pitch was a little weird, but after that, I was locked in and didn’t pay attention to it. I was just trying to lift the ball and get Camargo to score.”
Prato needed only two more pitches to lace the ball right between the second baseman and right fielder positioned right at the bag. It took a lot of momentum for the Saints to get to the point where they could have the walk-off win. They were down 6-1 in the bottom of the seventh, following a scoreless top half from reliever Hobie Harris.
As luck would have it, catcher Patrick Winkel began a seventh-inning rally with a lead-off double, and Prato reached on an error from the third baseman. Eeles, who got the offense rolling to start the game, drew a walk to get the bases loaded for Castillo.
Castillo has had plenty of bases-loaded opportunities at the plate in his career, but he’d never had a hit over the fence with the bases juiced.
“That was the first one for sure,” said Castillo. “I enjoyed it, man, I loved it. The time that I hit the ball, I felt like, ‘Oh, here we go,’ and it felt like the first homer in my life over again.”
Running around the bases feeling like a kid again, Castillo breathed life back into a lineup and brought them within a run of the RailRiders for the first time since the second inning.
The Saints had the first lead in this game, thanks to Eeles. He initially produced St. Paul’s first run of the game on a home run. But after a discussion between the umpires, the umpires overturned it to a double, which made Gardenhire furious that it wasn’t a triple since the umpires made the call when he was only 15 feet from the base. Looking like his father, Ron, the umpires ejected Toby Gardenhire, and Eeles appreciated his manager’s efforts to get him to third.
“I think if I did one more push-up yesterday during my workout,” Eeles said after the game, “I could have gotten that ball out of the park.”
Following Prato’s walk-off hit, he and his teammates walked back toward the Saints clubhouse. Prato’s teammates missed him with the water cooler dump, which landed square on Yunior Severino. The post-game vibes were the best they’d been for the team in nearly two weeks. The cheers, howls, and praises could be easily heard in the hallway outside their clubhouse as their wives and girlfriends awaited them.
To top off the victory, Saints bench coach Tyler Smarslok, who managed the remainder of the game following Gardenhire’s ejection, handed the lineup card to his second baseman.
It’s a simple gesture in a 150-game season. However, after everything the St. Paul Saints had been through leading up to that game, it’s something Prato, Castillo, Eeles, and the rest will remember as one of the highlights of their 2024 season in St. Paul.
