Nuts explode with seven-run eight to tan Rawhide

As the Modesto Nuts’ 2014 season wound through an awful April, miserable May and the jinxed months of June and July, the collective weight accumulated.

The Nuts were tight and troubled – a team seemingly knowing before the first pitch each night that it would find a way to lose.

But something has changed, and suddenly the Nuts not only are playing good baseball, but are having fun doing it.

And no moment this season has been more fun than Saturday’s seven-run eighth inning that carried Modesto to a 9-2 victory over Visalia before 3,738 at John Thurman Field.

Where did this new spirit come from? Did the team’s first four-game win streak of the season prompt the removal of the emotional burden of this long season, or is the streak the result of the team deciding to have fun?

“I think it took us being eliminated from the playoffs officially,” said Nuts pitcher Matt Flemer in a completely tongue-in-cheek frame of mind. “Everybody is loose, and the great thing about this is that no one’s pointing fingers at anybody – no one’s blaming anything on pitching, or hitting or coaches. Everybody’s been riding the same bus all season long.”

This most recent ride ended with the Nuts sending 12 batters to the plate in the eighth to break a 2-2 tie.

Kyle Von Tungeln broke the tie with a one-out, bases-loaded single that scored two runs, Alec Mehrten – a newcomer from Madera and Fresno Pacific University – drew a bases-loaded walk, and Michael Ramirez made the game a sudden blowout with a grand slam down the line in left.

The rally gave Flemer his 11th win to tie for the California League lead, and he deserved this one.

The Cal grad needed only 82 pitches to get through eight innings and would have come out in the ninth to go for his first complete game of the season if organizational rules didn’t require reliever Rayan Gonzalez to get some work.

“Flemer threw a great game,” said center fielder David Dahl, who joined Juan Ciriaco with three hits. “He was locating really well and getting a lot of ground balls and fly balls with no one really barreling him up. We wanted to give him a win there.”

Modesto managed baserunners in only three of the six innings pitched by Visalia starter Blayne Weller, twice scratching out runs.

In the third, one-out singles by Mike Tauchman, Ciriaco and Dahl gave the Nuts a 1-0 lead, but Weller got out of the inning on a pop-up and one of his seven strikeouts.

Modesto added a run in the fifth when Tauchman blasted a one-out triple off the wall in center and Ciriaco followed with a sacrifice fly to right.

The way Flemer was pitching, the 2-0 lead appeared to be safe. Flemer needed only 53 pitches to get though six innings, allowing a lone single.

But he lost his shutout bid in the seventh when Breland Almadova led off with a double to left-center, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on Rudy Flores’ one-out sacrifice fly.

Then, the lead vanished entirely in the eighth when George Roberts’ one-out bloop down the left-field line fell for a double. Roberts eventually scored on a first-pitch, two-out bloop single to right by Ryan Gebhardt.

Though April, May, June and July, any lead lost in the late innings almost assuredly would have resulted in yet another Modesto loss.

But, as Flemer said, those were the old Nuts.

The Nuts are streaking. How about that?

“Four in a row sounds very nice,” Flemer said. “Five sounds even better.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2014 at 10:36 PM with the headline "Nuts explode with seven-run eight to tan Rawhide."