This is the last in a series of articles looking back on the Knights’ season by Charlotte beat writer Jeff Cohen. In this installment, Jeff offers his take on the quality of baseball in Charlotte in 2021.
The Knights made me pay a heavy price to experience the ascension of Gavin Sheets, the miraculous comeback of Jake Burger, the emergence of Micker Adolfo and the arrival of Romy Gonzalez: I had to watch a lot of ugly baseball this season.
The biggest detriment to well-played baseball was Covid. The pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 season and minor leaguers were rusty, especially pitchers.
It was more than two months into the season before pitchers had enough innings under their belts so that the Knights’ brass could begin to weed out under-performers. Until then, each reliever worked a minimum of at least an inning at a time, regardless of results. And often times, those results were far from pretty.
At 47-81, the Knights were last in the 20-team Triple-A East, with a league-worst run differential of -133.
To be brutally honest, part of the reason was lack of talent. But playing in one of the most hitter-friendly ballparks in all the minor leagues greatly compounded matters. Knights’ hurlers were just one rung from the major leagues, and they were too cautious.
Manager Wes Helms and pitching coach Matt Zaleski preached a philosophy of attacking the zone and pitching to soft contact, but the pitchers refused, and nibbled away instead. The result was a staff that averaged about seven walks a game throughout the first half of the season. Invariably, those walks were followed by home runs, and games often got out of hand quickly.
Adding to the pitching woes were an inordinant amount of wild pitches, often with runners on third base. The staff had 117 on the season, 25 more than the next highest team in the league.
The exception was veteran starter Mike Wright. His outings were a joy, in part because he was effective and went deeper into games, but mostly because he was far from the most talented pitcher on the team. Yet he had the mental toughness to work his way back to the major leagues after a disappointing first go-round. And his love of the game was apparent.
One of the biggest differentiators at Triple-A are the guys with the mental toughness to overcome adversity and failure, and Wright is the poster child of that.
The Staff Begins To Turn Things Around
The pitching improved dramatically around mid-July as the Knights finally dropped more than a half-dozen stuggling pitchers and brought up reinforcements from Birmingham.
One new arrival was Kade McClure, the FutureSox #19 prospect, while another was a more below-the-radar guy, John Parke. But both were quite effective in stabilizing the rotation and allowed the Knights to not tax the bullpen so much and, in so doing, become more competitive.
Several new arms arrived in the bullpen but the one that caught my attention was Anderson Severino. I still vividly recall Severino’s first appearance: an electric fastball that hit 101 combined with a curveball that he could land for strikes as well. Bennett Sousa could also be poised for a big 2022.
This culminated in late August with the Knights’ best baseball of the season. The starters were going deeper into games, the bullpen was more reliable and the offense featured Yasmani Grandal on a rehab assignment along with Burger, Sheets, Gonzalez, Yermin Mercedes, a rejuvenated Blake Rutherford and a blazing-hot Mikie Mahtook.
That lineup didn’t last long, however, as Grandal ended his rehab and Sheets and Gonzalez were September 1 call-ups. The offense never fully recovered even as the pitching hung in there.
Not A Great Defensive Club
The outfielders were not the fastest guys, but made all of the routine plays and occasionally a few spectacular ones.
Mikie Mahtook often patrolled centerfield, and the power-hitter had an excellent year, no doubt surprising a lot of people who had not seen him before with his great reads and routes to the ball.
Blake Rutherford and Gavin Sheets were steady, as was Micker Adolfo, who had the biggest arm by far of the quartet. There was a game or two when Adolfo was just called up to Charlotte and Luis Robert was in town on rehab, and those two arms in left and center made for must-see baseball.
The infield defense was average at best.
A big part of the problem were guys playing out of position. When the team broke camp, it had Tim Beckham, Matt Reynolds, Zach Remillard, Marco Hernandez and Danny Mendick sharing time at short and second. Later, even has Mendick was called up and Beckham was hurt, the team added Johan Cruz, Laz Rivera and Ti’Quan Forbes, and Romy Gonzalez and Ruben Tejada after that.
It was probably near-impossible to play stout defense up the middle with a different double-play combination every game. The Knights turned 81 double plays on the season, the sixth lowest total in the league.
Burger was entrenched at third base and he steadily improved as the season unfolded. It was a good first effort after missing the last three years. Burger played 65 games at third base for the Knights (plus 14 at DH and five at 2B), and committed 10 errors in 149 chances at the hot-corner, while starting nine double plays.
Sheets, meanwhile, split time between first and rightfield. But Sheets was the only natural first baseman on the team, and without him, Forbes, Remillard and Mercedes learned the position on the fly, which didn’t exactly help the defense.
Nate Nolan, Seby Zavala and Mercedes split most of the catching, and the results were mixed. Helms said it was Mercedes, surprisingly, with the best times to second base, but he also led the team in passed balls (9).
Overall, the catchers were successful on just 31 of 161 (19.3%) stolen-base attempts, though some of that is on the pitching staff as well.
Baserunning And A Lack Of Fundamentals
I don’t know how much was the 12-month layoff and how much was the nature of minor-league baseball in this era, but fundamentals were not always where you’d expect them to be for Triple-A players.
Baserunning was especially frustrating: the Knights gave up way too many outs on the bases.
The Knights’ hitters were also last in all of Triple-A baseball in walks and near the top in strikeouts. While the White Sox and Knights’ coaches encouraged grinding at bats, the players had different ideas and were far too aggressive. It is no surprise then, that too many of the team’s home runs were solo shots.
Team Attitude And Hustle
While the team may have had deficiencies on the field, you couldn’t tell it from their hustle, attitude and effort. Covid limited my player interactions to batting practice, but the comaraderie there seemed genuine and the work ethic second-to-none. I still recall the players’ excitement — in the dugout, during a game — when Sheets and Burger were getting their first hits in Chicago.
The Schedule
Covid hurt the quality of play in another way: it prompted MLB to dramatically alter schedules in a way that minimized the risk of travel by limiting the Knights to just a handful of geographically close — and very good — opponents.
For starters, the Knights played the Durham Bulls 30 out of 130 games this year. That is a crazy-high percentage (23%, actually) to play the best team in Triple-A.
The Knights also played the Atlanta Braves’ affiliate, Gwinnett, 18 times (winning just two). This was another brutal match-up as the Braves’ farm team was loaded with quality major-league veterans.
Moreover, every series was six games long. So teams had to fight through the monotany and familiarity of seeing the same opponents over and over, not to mention trying to come up with new pitching strategies. There are only so many ways you can pitch a guy.
Next Season
I expect an improved level of play next season by the Knights, regardless of the talent level, assuming Covid doesn’t interrupt players’ off-season work. With Helms, Zaleski and Chris Johnson in charge of things again — and why wouldn’t they be — I imagine they’ll benefit greatly from having their first year together under their belt and will run an even tighter ship in year two.
Less than six months till Opening Day! Thanks for reading!
Photo credit: Laura Wolff/Charlotte Knights
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