'Cats pay tribute to '83 L-Mets

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the most dominant teams in Carolina League history — a 1983 Lynchburg Mets squad that featured Dwight Gooden and Lenny Dykstra — the Hillcats donned retro L-Mets jerseys for their game against Kinston on Friday.

For one night, they did the uniforms justice.

The Hillcats hit all-star pitcher Steven Wright hard, scoring all but one of their runs in the first four innings of an 8-5 win at City Stadium.

“You’ve got to give our hitters credit,” Lynchburg manager Jeff Branson said. “We got balls that we could handle and do some damage with.”

Jared Keel and Alex Presley both homered as Lynchburg (28-40) sent Wright to showers early. His final line was his worst of the season: seven runs on seven hits in four innings.

Wright (2-4), one of two Indians pitchers on the league’s all-star roster, entered Friday with a 2.24 ERA. Opponents were hitting a paltry .214 off of him this year.

“He’s good, but he obviously didn’t have his best stuff today,” Keel said. “We took advantage of it.”

The Lynchburg offense got rolling in the second. Trailing 2-0, Jamie Romak led off with a single and Steve Lerud lifted an opposite field double.

Romak scored on a wild pitch before Kent Sakamoto blooped a single to center to tie things at 2.

Keel followed with his sixth home run of the year, rocketing a line drive to left that barely got enough air to clear the wall. That made it 4-2.

“Generally, he’s a sinker ball-type guy,” Keel said of Wright. “(Hitting coach Chris) Truby came out earlier and said, ‘See the ball up.’ And he left some balls up there.”

The Hillcats weren’t done. Presley pulled his second home run of the year just inside the right field foul pole in the third. In the fourth, Greg Picart and Angel Gonzalez hit back-to-back RBI doubles to make it 7-3.

Wright’s counterpart for the third time this year was Hillcats right-hander Michael Crotta, who had his moments in five innings. Crotta (6-4) gave up two earned runs on four hits in his 82 pitches, uncharacteristically walking three batters but striking out five.

The 6-foot-6 Crotta made several changes to his delivery since new pitching coach Mike Steele joined the team a few weeks back.

He’s taking a longer stride to take advantage of his height and add more angle to his pitches — “They said I had the stride of a 6-1 guy,” Crotta said — and he’s changed his positioning on the rubber to minimize throwing across his body, which was costing him velocity.

Crotta had a 5.30 ERA through 11 starts. In his last three, including a rain-abbreviated two-inning outing last week, he’s posted a 2.63 ERA, with 11 strikeouts and just three walks.

Except for the clashing green socks and pinstripe-less pants, the retro jerseys seemed to be a hit among the players, even though most of them weren’t aware of who even played for the 1983 Lynchburg Mets.

“I wasn’t born in ’83,” said Crotta, who came along a year later.

Branson knows a couple of them. He played with Randy Milligan on the 1993 Cincinnati Reds and Gooden on the 1998 Cleveland Indians.

But the 1983 L-Mets’ résumé was more than enough to impress the players. Lynchburg took the league championship that season, winning 99 of its 142 games, numbers many Hillcats couldn’t fathom.

“It’d be nice to do that,” Branson said.

NOTES: Kinston dropped to 34-33. … Picart filled in for Brian Friday (back) at short and hit two doubles. He has six hits in the last week after starting the year 3-for-48 (.063). … RHP Moises Robles struck out two in the ninth to earn his second save. … Sakamoto was 2-for-4 with a double, an RBI and two runs scored.