Omaha gets quick jump on 51s

Nick Christensen

Friday, June 13, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.

Omaha got its bats going early Thursday night, scoring four times in the first inning en route to a 6-4 victory against Las Vegas in their Pacific Coast League game at Cashman Field.

51s starter Scott Winchester faced eight batters in the first in allowing the four runs.

Winchester, who has struggled through most of the season, rebounded to retire 12 of 16 batters over the next four innings, but was pulled in the sixth after allowing back-to-back doubles that plated another run.

It was Winchester's second start after spending about two weeks in the bullpen. He pitched a complete game Saturday at Tacoma, allowing four hits and one unearned run.

"I try to be as aggressive as possible -- go after hitters, and try and throw as many strikes as I can," Winchester said after Thursday's loss. "I don't like getting behind hitters, unfortunately, tonight that happened a couple times and I got hurt."

Winchester said his focus on pitching is trying to force batters into groundouts. On Thursday, he managed nine outs on ground balls.

Pitching coach Shawn Barton said he didn't have much to work on between innings with Winchester in the dugout.

"He just makes some adjustments. He wasn't getting his ground balls in the first inning, and after that, he went on to get nine outs (that way)," he said.

"I thought he did well. He made some mistakes in the sixth, but he kept us in the game for the most part."

"Often, pitchers have problems early in the game," explained manager John Shoemaker. "A lot of pitchers don't have their real good stuff in the first inning. Perhaps, they don't know what they have real good stuff that night, and maybe they're not as loose as they thought they were.

"Tonight, I thought Scott did a great job of settling down. Omaha swung the bat well this series, and you have to give them a lot of credit."

"In the first inning, my ball just came out kind of flat," said Winchester. "They were hitting real aggressive, hitting a lot of first and second pitches. When they're doing that, I try and make an adjustment as fast as I can."

"That cracks me up," he told Miller. "My first reaction is that I feel bad for the people who pick 'D.' But I guess that narrows down selections pretty good."

"I'll be sure to send some of my friends over there to watch games now," he added. "I'm very popular in Vegas. I know they have me up there on a lot of those casino billboards."