Las Vegas survived pre-All-Star break fatigue, set to finish second half slate of games

Las Vegas Aviators manager Fran Riordan hinted at a potential hangover after his team won the first half and punched a ticket to this year’s postseason.

His team responded by taking five of the next six games away from the Albuquerque Isotopes in a home series from Las Vegas Ballpark. At the time, it was the club’s fourth series win of at least five games.

At nearly 90 games into the season, Riordan believed he started seeing something other than a hangover plaguing his team.

“I think you look at us being about 90 games into our season and we haven’t had any sort of rough patch,” he said. “The best teams in the world go through some sort of rough patch when you’re talking about 150 or 162 games. We just happened to hit ours when we hit ours, the fact that it was 90 games into our season is pretty impressive.”

Maybe early signs of fatigue began to show in that five-win series against Albuquerque. The final three Las Vegas wins of that series had a final margin of a single run.

Perhaps, it was the back-to-back lost series to the Oklahoma City Comets that started to show cracks in the Aviators’ armor. Conceivably, it could’ve just been the continued misfortune for the team against the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate with all three outright lost series this season coming to the same foe, including a six-game series loss and two three-game series losses.

If neither is the answer, Riordan definitely believes the first two games of last week’s road series at El Paso provided one.

“There were a few things that were showing that hadn’t showed up pretty much the entire season,” he said. “Both those are just things that happen in baseball, just mental mistakes defensively, some baserunning mistakes, poor situational hitting, whatever the case was. Just things that occur but we just hadn’t seen on a regular basis.”

Those two losses coupled with back-to-back OKC losses to end the week prior, Las Vegas found itself on a season-long four game losing streak.

And as it’s done all year long, the Aviators continued to show resistance. It won three straight games to end that four-game losing streak before concluding the week with a six-game series split with the Chihuahuas.

“El Paso’s a better team than they were when we faced them last,” he said amidst the series. “They’ve improved – they’re playing really good baseball so the first two games they flat out outplayed us [...] The last two games we’ve come out on top and we’ve pretty much dictated the flow of the game [and] dictated momentum.”

Still fresh into the second half portion of the schedule, Las Vegas sports a 10-8 record at the All-Star break. A far-cry from the first half start that saw the team end with the best record in all of the Triple-A.

Riordan likened last week to being a teacher seeking to maintain the alertness of an eager classroom awaiting summer break or a holiday weekend.

“That’s exactly the case,” he said. “These stats still count. The goal here is to keep playing at a high-level so you’re ready to go play in the Big Leagues. And it doesn’t matter if the all-star break is coming, it doesn’t matter if you’re tired, it doesn’t matter if you’re not feeling great physically. Nobody cares.

“You still have to go out and compete at a really high level. And if that’s not happening, it’s certainly something that I’ll bring to an individual’s attention – sometimes even the team.”

The Aviators will return to action Friday, July 18 with a three-game weekend series from Las Vegas Ballpark against the Round Rock Express of the Texas Rangers organization. First pitch of the series is set for 7:05 p.m.