PCL: Isotopes start out second half of season in cellar

Albuquerque faces New Orleans today

Pancho Morris | The New Mexican

7/17/2008 - 7/18/08

ALBUQUERQUE — Fourteen games below .500.

Thirteen-and-one-half games out of first place.

Losing streaks of seven and six games in the past three weeks.

The hole the Albuquerque Isotopes dug through the first half of the 2008 Pacific Coast League baseball season prior to the Triple-A All-Star break was total-team.

"The responsibility falls on everyone's shoulders," Dean Treanor, Isotopes manager, says. "Losing is contagious, if you allow it. We allowed doubt to creep in."

That was before the Isotopes capped a dismal first half with back-to-back victories over the Iowa Cubs, the team with the best record in the PCL.

"This is who we are," Treanor says. "We lost track of that."

With 46 games left in the regular season, can the Isotopes find their way to the top of the American Southern Division?

"We're capable," Treanor says.

The Isotopes (42-56) open second-half play tonight in New Orleans. The Zephyrs (47-52) are one of three teams ahead of them in the division. One series does not a season make, but this four-game set could commence a comeback or continue the crumble.

"The key to this is we have to win in our division, and we haven't," Treanor says.

The truth is in the head-to-head.

The Isotopes are 1-6 against New Orleans, 3-9 against Oklahoma and 4-8 against Round Rock. That's a combined 8-23, which is 15 games below .500.

Get the picture?

Treanor does.

"We know how big of a series that is," Treanor says of New Orleans. "We have to win that series, if not sweep. I believe we're gonna get it done in New Orleans."

Albuquerque sends its ace, Frankie De La Cruz, to the mound tonight. De La Cruz (9-4) faces Claudio Vargas (3-1) in a battle of right-handers.

"Obviously, we have to have help," Treanor says of catching Oklahoma, which holds a nine-game lead on New Orleans, "and obviously, we have to get on a streak. But this team is capable of doing that.

"We started it. We just need to keep it going."