Power surge sends Las Vegas 51s past Isotopes

A couple of hours before Sunday’s loss, manager Wally Backman was sitting in the 51s’ dugout talking about the team’s power outage.

After hitting four home runs in the first game of the season, Las Vegas had one since.

“It’s a little bit of a concern. I thought we had more power than we’ve showed,” Backman said. “I still think we do have more power than what we’ve shown.”

Since then, the 51s have started to show some of that with four home runs in the past three games, including back-to-back blasts by Gavin Cecchini and T.J. Rivera in the sixth inning Tuesday to lead them to a 7-2 victory over the Albuquerque Isotopes at Cashman Field.

“There’s a lot of guys with some pop on this team, and I think we’ve been putting a little pressure on ourselves trying to put runs on the board, but now we’re just starting to get a little more comfortable just playing as a team and putting together good at-bats,” Rivera said Tuesday. “That’s a good result, and I think the home runs come from there.”

Rivera said earlier in the season he was trying to hit home runs. And not by coincidence, that didn’t work. Tuesday’s home run was his first of the season.

Rivera has hit for average throughout his minor league career, with no more than nine home runs in a season.

Along the same line, Backman met with some players a couple of days ago with a similar thought.

“My message to a few of the other players the other day … (was) know who you are as a hitter and be the best hitter that you know you’re supposed to be, and if that means hitting the ball gap-to-gap and you’re a singles guy, whatever that means, be that guy,” Backman said.

While it might be too early to assess how they’ve taken the advice, the 51s have had better performances the past two games.

Rivera finished 3-for-4 with an RBI on Tuesday, and left fielder Ty Kelly went 3-for-3 with a walk and two RBIs.

Kelly, an offseason pickup, is hitting .471 in 13 games.

“Nobody’s going to hit at a .450 clip for the rest of the year, but you can see that he’s a professional hitter. He really knows how to work the counts. He doesn’t chase out of the zone — very, very little,” Backman said. “Guys like him and (Roger) Bernadina, they show that real good plate discipline, and you hope for that to rub off on some of the other guys.”

Kelly drove in the first run of the game in the fourth on a single to center and helped pad the lead in the seventh with another RBI single.

Right-hander Gabriel Ynoa turned in another quality start, giving up two runs (one earned) in 6 2/3 innings while picking up his first win.

The victory was Las Vegas’ second in a row after a four-game losing streak. The team has its first off-day of the season Wednesday before welcoming Tacoma on Thursday.

“We have a really good team, but if we all contribute and do small things, play the game the right way, play it hard, eventually we’ll all come together,” Rivera said. “And that’s starting to show in these last two games, and hopefully we can keep that going.”

Betsy Helfand can be reached at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @BetsyHelfand