Mattison Shines for Greensboro

By Rob Daniels
Reprinted from the Greensboro News & Record 7/30/09

GREENSBORO — Some things get lost when a baseball team is out of contention and tempted to mark off days on the calendar and count down the road trips. No matter what the Greensboro Grasshoppers' final won-lost record turns out to be this year, dismissing Kevin Mattison's 2009 is going to be next to impossible.

The East Forsyth High School graduate hit a three-run homer and delivered a safety squeeze for another RBI on Wednesday as the Hoppers swatted the Savannah Sand Gnats 13-2.

The Hoppers are 10-22 in the second half of the South Atlantic League's season and not particularly close to competitive relevance. At least their center fielder is in exclusive — and entirely personal — company.

Mattison, a 23-year-old from Kernersville who played at UNC-Asheville, hit his 15th home run of the year and swiped his 39th base. For good measure, he upped his RBIs total to 46. No minor-leaguer of his stealing stature has more than 39 RBI. Those other 11 guys have combined for 18 homers; Mattison has hit four in the past five games.

For the sake of blind numerical comparison, the only guy with Mattison's combination of production and speed is Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford, who makes considerably more money than the Florida Marlins' farmhand.

"My average isn't where I want it to be (.252), but I've been working with a lot of things in the swing, and I think it has come a long way," Mattison said.

He played small ball and long ball Wednesday to break open a tight game. The little stuff came when he authored the squeeze with runners on first and third and one out in the fifth to give his team a 4-1 lead off Gnats starter Eric Beaulac, who was victimized by four errors on the day.

Beaulac (6-6) gave up four runs — none of them earned — in five innings.

"I wanted to give myself one chance to drive the ball, and I didn't really hit him that well," Mattison said. "I figured I'd give myself up for a run. With this park, you need a lot of runs. You never know what can happen."

The most significant scoring came in a five-run sixth, which Mattison capped with a line drive that kept carrying until it cleared the fence in right-center field.

"I thought it had a chance with that howling wind," he said. "I thought it would be close, which is why I was busting it around first in case it didn't get up."

The results made a winner of starter Brad Hand (5-11), who has pitched well in three of his past four outings.

After traveling today, the Hoppers begin a four-game series at Delmarva at 7:05 p.m. Friday.