Phillip Wellman gathered his Arkansas Travelers in the clubhouse at Dickey-Stephens Park on Monday night.
It was after 10 p.m., and the Travs had just been swept by the Northwest Arkansas Naturals in a doubleheader.
"Only one person got to talk," Wellman said Tuesday. "That was me."
Whatever he said seemed to get through to the Travs on Tuesday as they tried to salvage the end of a nine-game homestand and stay in the thick of the race for the Texas League North Division's first-half title.
The Travs scored two runs in the first inning Tuesday and starter Nate Smith struck out nine over seven innings in a 5-2 victory in front of an announced crowd of 3,630.
The victory was only the second for the Travs (31-33) in their five-game series with the Naturals (23-41), but it ended positively after Wellman questioned his players' approach at the plate and their body language during their series against the Texas League's worst team.
"Sometimes it doesn't matter how old you are, or how long you've been around, you need a kick in the butt," Wellman said. "I didn't like the body language. It didn't come close to matching my expectations. If they were honest with themselves, they didn't play up to their own expectations."
Tuesday's victory, coupled with Springfield's 2-1 victory over Tulsa, sends Arkansas into a four-game series at Tulsa with a chance to play for the first-half title. The Travs trail the Drillers (35-28) by 4 1/2 games with six games left in the first half of the Texas League's split season, which ends Monday.
"It's exciting," Travs catcher Jett Bandy said. "It's about player development and stuff, but we want to clinch the first half and we're playing the team that's ahead of us. It's always fun to play in that type of atmosphere."
Bandy was one of the big reasons the Travs were able to make up a game on Tulsa on Tuesday.
He went 2 for 4 with 2 RBI and came through twice with hits with runners in scoring position, which the Travs had struggled to accomplish over the past week. Arkansas was hitting .146 in the first eight games of the homestand with runners in scoring position. The Travs were 4 for 8 Tuesday.
Bandy's first-inning single drove home in Alex Yarbrough from second for a 1-0 lead, and Yarbrough drove in Eric Stamets from second with a single to make it 3-2 in the fourth inning. Kyle Hudson's bunt single in the sixth scored Maikol Gonzalez from third to make it 4-2, and Bandy's single in the seventh scored Yarbrough from second.
"That's what was annoying me about this series," Wellman said. "In all honesty, on paper, this is a team that we should have beat three out of five, or five out of five, and we walk out of here with two wins. We could have put an immense amount of pressure on Tulsa."
The Naturals haven't been a factor in the division race for most of the season. They are 12 1/2 games behind Tulsa, and Manager Vance Wilson said they started discussing how to prepare for the second half of the season last week.
Part of that message was to focus more on fundamentals such as fielding. Micah Gibbs' throwing error in the sixth inning Tuesday night was the Naturals' league-leading 93rd of the season. No other Texas League team has more than 78 errors.
"If we're going to do anything in the second half, from Game 1 we've got to roll fundamentally," Wilson said.
Sports on 06/11/2014