Kinston Indians 2004

In 2004, Carolina League Manager of the Year Torey Lovullo led his team to their first League Championship in ten years. Rob Sinclair followed every pitch of the 2004 season as the K-Tribe's play by play man; he looks back on the Tribe's dramatic run in this 2004 Mills Cup Recap.

J.D. Martin may have been named Most Valuable Player of the Carolina League Championship Series last year as Kinston defeated Wilmington three games to two, but in my mind he shared that honor with Dennis Malave. Now without question, Martin deserved his award. He was nothing short of brilliant in his two post-season starts, and both starts came in the deciding games of the South Division Championship Series and the Mills Cup series, respectively. But there is also no question that without Dennis Malave, the Indians would not have won their first league title since 1995. And that right there is the beautiful thing about baseball: You never know who the hero is going to be on any given night. This isn't football or basketball, sports where coaches can call timeouts late in games and design plays for their superstars. Baseball is a game where everyone must prepare equally, because when opportunity knocks many times it's the 25th man on your bench who answers the door.

When you compare Martin and Malave, you are first struck by their differences rather than their similarities. There are, of course, the obvious differences (Martin is tall, white and single, while Malave is short, Hispanic and married), but the subtle differences are the most acute. One is a star, the other a role player. One was a first round draft pick, the other a free agent. One is a top prospect, the other potentially the "player to be named later" in a future trade. Of all the players on the Kinston roster last season, perhaps no pair had taken a more divergent route in their careers. But with Kinston down 0-2 in the Carolina League Championship Series and staring at the rather daunting prospect of having to win three straight games in Wilmington (where they were 3-7 in the regular season), Manager of the Year Torey Lovullo made the tough decision to sit a slumping Nathan Panther and insert Malave into the lineup. The move paid immediate dividends.

The Indians had scored a grand total of one run in the first two games thanks not so much to a lack of clutch hitting but rather a lack of hitting in general. They had been held to just four hits in each of the first two games, but in the second inning of game three Blue Rocks starter Dusty Hughes helped Kinston's cause by issuing consecutive two-out walks to Javi Herrera and Jonathan van Every. That extended the inning for Malave, who lined the first pitch he saw into center field for a 1-0 Indians advantage. Kinston briefly held a 2-0 lead on Kevin Kouzmanoff's RBI single, but Wilmington answered with a run in the fourth against starter Brian Slocum. It remained a 2-1 game until the ninth inning, when Malave doubled and scored to give the K-Tribe some breathing room in the 3-1 win.

That victory extended the season for another day, and in game four 19-year-old phenom Adam Miller took the ball for the Indians. The Kinston offense struck early against Wilmington's Jason Kaanoi, as Eider Torres doubled on Kaanoi's first pitch of the game and Brad Snyder collected an RBI single four pitches later for a quick 1-0 lead. Van Every lofted a wind-aided solo home run in the fourth, and Malave made another big impact by scoring two runs in Kinston's eventual 4-0 victory. In addition to his home run, van Every also provided the defensive play of the game in the seventh. With the score 3-0, Miller departed with runners on the corners and one out. Juan Lara came on in relief to face Mel Stocker, and Stocker delivered a fly ball to right field that everyone in the ballpark assumed would be a sacrifice fly. Van Every delivered a bullet to the plate, however, and threw out Adam Keim tagging from third base. That took all the air out of the Blue Rocks, and after Landon Stockman struck out the side in the ninth the stage was set for Martin, Malave, and their teammates to make history in game five.

Martin had had an up-and-down regular season, and suffered from the worst run support of any Kinston starter. He had been dazzling in his previous start against Winston-Salem though, facing the minimum 24 batters through eight shutout innings to win the deciding game three of the SDCS. But as game five of the championship series unfolded it became clear that if anyone was capable of topping that performance, it was Martin himself.

For the second straight night, Kinston scored in the first inning. This time Shaun Larkin pulled a double just inside the first base bag to score Brad Snyder, and although Larkin was stranded at second the tone had been set. Martin worked efficiently through the first three innings without allowing a single hit, but in the fourth inning he left a fastball over the plate and Donnie Murphy made him pay with a game-tying solo home run. Martin barely blinked, however, striking out Shane Costa and Mike Aviles and inducing an easy fly out from Travis Chapman to end the frame.

As if fate was following a script, Malave led off the top of the fifth. Having already reached base once in the game on an error in the second inning, Malave this time worked Blue Rocks starter Devon Lowery for a walk. Luis Cotto followed with a perfect bunt single to put runners on first and second, and Torres then put a sacrifice bunt attempt up the third base line. Lowery got to the ball quickly and fielded it cleanly, but threw off his back foot and the ball sailed over the head of first baseman Damaso Espino. The error scored Malave and moved Cotto to third, and Snyder followed with an RBI groundout to make it 3-1. From there, Martin did the rest.

He struck out a pair in the bottom of the fifth and then whiffed Matt Tupman on three pitches to open the sixth. After working around a two-out single later in the sixth, Martin needed just nine pitches during a one-two-three seventh. Another strikeout, his season-high 10th of the night, began the eighth, but Espino followed with a base hit to right. That brought Tupman to the plate, and he sent a laser back up the middle. Torres was shaded toward the bag, however, and dove to his right to knock down the ball. From there Torres made a back-handed flip to Cotto for the force out on Espino, and Cotto's relay throw to first was just in time to beat the slow-footed Tupman for an inning-ending, momentum-killing 4-6-3 double play.

In the bottom of the ninth, Martin strode back out to the pitcher's mound looking for the first complete game of his career. "There was no way I was taking him out of that game," Lovullo would say later. "He deserved a chance to finish what he had started." With two outs and a runner on first, the finish finally came as Mike Aviles popped a first-pitch slider into short left field. Cotto, who played for Wilmington in 2003, called off Kouzmanoff and made the catch, capping the greatest comeback in Carolina League history. In 60 years, no team had ever won three straight road games to win the Carolina League championship after losing the first two games at home. Until then.

Martin, soaked to the bone in beer and champagne, came out of the clubhouse to accept his MVP trophy from league president John Hopkins. His final line was astounding: nine innings, four hits, one run, one walk, 10 strikeouts. Overall in the playoffs he went 2-0 with a 0.53 ERA. In 17 innings he allowed just five hits, while striking out 17 and walking one. Malave, meanwhile, was the catalyst for Kinston's offensive resurgence in the final three games. He batted .375 in those three games, reached base seven times in 12 plate appearances, and scored four of Kinston's 10 runs, including the winning run in game five. And so, for two young men so vastly different, J.D. Martin and Dennis Malave will always be linked by the most important similarity of all. They, and their teammates, are champions.