Dismal season still had plusses

Nick Christensen

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005 | 9:25 a.m.

There was no batting practice at Cashman Field before Monday's season finale, just a few Las Vegas 51s players and coaches tossing a football around, acknowledging what's been understood for more than a month.

Autumn will be here shortly, and the sooner all those involved can forget about the 2005 baseball season, the better.

At 57-86 after Sunday's 8-5 loss to Salt Lake, the 51s finished with the second-worst record in the Las Vegas franchise's 23-year history, a game ahead of the 56-87 record put together by the 1994 squad, which was affiliated with the Padres.

The last time the Dodgers' Triple-A team had a winning percentage below .400 was in 1965, when the Spokane Indians went 57-90.

It would be easy to say the positives in the 51s' 2005 season ended at the gate, where the team averaged 4,646 tickets sold per game, the most since 1999 and the eighth-highest average ticket sales since the team moved from Spokane in 1983.

But despite the abysmal record, 51s manager Jerry Royster said he saw some positives in what for him seemed like a very short season.

Royster pointed out the play of Delwyn Young, who hit .335 with 12 doubles after being called up from Jacksonville on July 30; the growth of catcher Mike Nixon, who hit .226 and went 9-20 as a catcher in a season he was expected to be converted to an outfielder at Single-A Vero Beach; and the overall play of Brian Myrow, who hit .282 with 22 home runs and 28 doubles while committing nine errors in 103 games at first base.

Myrow was named the team's MVP for 2005 by the organization and coaching staff. He was called up to the Dodgers in the seventh inning on Monday, and found out after the game.

He held back tears as he explained what it meant to him to get his first call to the major leagues after seven years in the minors.

"The difficult thing is honestly feeling like you're going to look back on your career as a career minor leaguer, and the time that you would have wasted, that you didn't give to your family," he said. "Whenever you try to maintain focus, you're trying to make it look like you're not wasting your time."

Royster said Myrow, who turned 29 on Sunday, was considering retirement earlier this season.

"He spent the whole year contemplating retirement during the course of the year, I was able to talk him out of that and tell him it was a bad idea," Royster said. "In reality if he goes and has a so-so season it isn't a bad idea.

"It's a special time that you don't get to share very often, and if he had quit he would have never, ever gotten it. The same thing happened to Mike Edwards his first time up, and Mike Rose had been here forever and I had to keep him in here for 20 minutes -- that's why I close the door when I do it, I don't want to embarass these guys. That's what makes the losses not so bad, either."

The Mayor's Trophy, given to the player the fans vote as the teams most valuable, was given to Cody Ross, who had 22 home runs and hit for the cycle in the 51s 9-6 loss to Salt Lake on Monday.

The 51s had a 6.20 team ERA, the worst in all of baseball. They gave up a team-record 952 runs this year, and Royster said not all of that fell on the pitching staff.

"It wasn't so much the errors as it was the plays not made," Royster said. "I think it really affected the pitching staff."

Simply, the 2005 51s, which included several Triple-A veterans, did not respond to the growth of the Dodgers prospects at Double-A Jacksonville. The Suns went 79-61 and earned a berth in the Southern League playoffs.

Nor did they respond well to the constant need for help in Los Angeles, with the Dodgers placing 23 players on the disabled list through the first five months of the season.

"It's been a weird season. We played really badly, we weren't very good. Yet there was something of importance going on every day," Royster said. "I tried to concentrate these guys efforts on what they need to do to get to the major leagues."

The message did get across to a few players -- outfielder Mike Edwards, catchers Dioner Navarro and Mike Rose, infielder Willy Aybar and pitcher Franquelis Osoria all have spent considerable time with the Dodgers and all five are with the major league club now. Jason Grabowski was also called up Monday.

"Some of them were doing well here and some of them weren't. But they needed them up there, so they went up there and they didn't play the same role they were playing down here," Royster said. "Injuries were the single biggest difference in the entire organization, especially here -- to both the pitching staff and the position players."

Of the starting rotation from the opening day -- Ryan Rupe, Edwin Jackson, Heath Totten, Pat Mahomes and T.J. Nall -- only Mahomes and Nall are on the 51s active roster and only Nall remained in the rotation.

The 51s themselves saw 18 players go on the disabled list this season.

Given the circumstances surrounding the generally abysmal season, Royster is hopeful he will get a pass and will be invited to return as manager of the 51s. The Dodgers havent kept a Triple-A manager through a winter since Glenn Hoffman was invited back to lead the Albuquerque Dukes in 1998. He was promoted midway through that 1998 season.

"There's a lot of things that have to come to fruition," Royster said of the chances of his return. "I know I would want to come back. I'll be managing again. I just don't know how I'm going to be able to do it personally next year or not. We'll see."

But breaking the good news to Myrow served as a fresh reminder to Royster of the joys of being a Triple-A manager.

"To have a guy that was so far off the radar, he got called up to a major league game and made an error and got executed," he said. "We went to work immediately in spring training. Cody Ross has a day like today and Brian Myrow got the call for the first time. As bad as the season is, I ain't sweatin' it when stuff like that happens.

"It doesn't wash away the season, but I tell you what. To sit here and watch these guys tear up and get emotional, it's pretty special."

The Pacific Coast League playoffs begin Wednesday. Nashville will play Oklahoma in the American Conference final, and Sacramento will play Tacoma in the Pacific Conference final. Both series are best-of-five.