Dayton Dragons: Graham's go-ahead HR, 3 others lead to first win of series

May 15—Carter Graham didn't try to intimidate the pitcher with a home-run stare in the sixth inning. With two on and trailing by a run, Graham's thoughts were quite the opposite.

"This week I haven't been crushing it the way I have the last couple weeks, so I was just thinking small, figuring out what I could do to get a base hit and get the next guy up," he said. "Because our whole lineup has been swinging it good."

As manager Julio Morillo said, "Simple is better."

And Graham's simple approach produced the biggest of several big hits on Thursday, May 14, including a three-run homer to regain the lead in Dayton's 8-4 victory over Lake County, snapping a two-game losing streak.

"I got a good pitch to hit and got it out front, and good things happen," Graham said.

Home runs and extra-base hits in general have carried the Dragons from .500 to 20-16 and into second place, 2.5 games behind Great Lakes in the Midwest League's East Division.

The homer binge started last week with 12 during a six-game sweep at West Michigan. This week the Dragons are giving the home run horn a workout with seven homers, including four Thursday. They have homered in 10 consecutive games for the first time since 2017, and 19 of their 33 homers have come in the last nine games.

"We've been squaring the ball up all year, but when you're playing in Michigan and it's snowing and the wind's blowing in, it's hard to get the ball over the fence," Graham said. "Now that it heats up, we get into late May and early June, I think we got a good team that can hit."

Morillo agrees that warmer temperatures are helping. And it's not even hot yet. He points to metrics that measure what a batted ball is expected to do compared to what it actually does as a reason for the early homer drought. And, he says, the hitters are being more selective and looking for pitches they can handle and hit hard.

"You could see the guys were hitting the ball really hard, but the results were not there a lot of times just because of the weather, the wind, which wasn't getting those extra-base hits that we needed," he said. "But now it's starting to warm up a little and things are different. We just need to keep barreling the ball up, and the extra-base hits will be there."

Kien Vu's barrel blasted the baseball for the second time this week and sixth time this season when he homered to lead off the fourth. After an error kept the inning alive, Alfredo Alcantara hit his fourth homer, a two-run no-doubter to left, for a 3-0 lead.

But the Dragons weren't finished. They couldn't be, not the way this week has gone. They led after the first inning in losses the two previous nights. So, of course, the Captains rallied again.

Dragons starter Nestor Lorant cruised through four innings, striking out nine and the side twice, to run his scoreless streak to 23 2/3 innings. But he walked two to start the fifth and surrendered a three-run homer to Esteban Gonzalez to tie the score.