2017 Alpine Cowboys Season Recap - Austin Prott Takes Over in Alpine
The 2017 Alpine Cowboys season represented a new beginning at Kokernot Field. After a disappointing 2016 season in which the Cowboys finished below .500 and missed the playoffs for the first time in Pecos League history, Alpine turned to a familiar face to lead the organization. Austin Prott took over as manager for the 2017 season, beginning a new chapter in his Alpine Cowboys career.
Prott was already familiar with Alpine and the Pecos League. He had been an important player for the Cowboys during the 2014 season, when Alpine won 47 regular-season games and advanced all the way to the Pecos League Championship Series. Prott had experienced firsthand what winning baseball at Kokernot Field looked like. Three years later, he returned in a different role with the responsibility of restoring the Cowboys as one of the league's contenders.
The challenge was significant. The 2016 Cowboys had finished 32-34 under Thomas Nelson, ending a run of five consecutive postseason appearances. For a franchise that had won the 2012 Pecos League Championship and reached the Championship Series again in 2014, missing the playoffs was a major disappointment.
Prott's first team immediately changed the direction of the franchise.
The Cowboys opened the 2017 season at Kokernot Field on May 25 with a 9-8 victory. The following night brought an even more dramatic game as Alpine won 16-15. After losing 15-12, the Cowboys answered with a 10-9 victory and then exploded for a 19-2 win.
Those first games offered a preview of what the 2017 season would frequently look like. Alpine could score runs in bunches, and the Cowboys were comfortable playing the high-scoring games that defined much of the Pecos League during the era.
By the end of May, Alpine had already posted victories of 9-8, 16-15, 10-9, 19-2 and 3-2. There were offensive shootouts and close pitching games, and Prott's first club was demonstrating an ability to win both.
June began with Alpine playing its best baseball of the young season.
The Cowboys opened the month with consecutive road victories of 8-6, 5-3, 18-5 and 13-3. Alpine returned home and continued winning, taking games 7-5 and 10-9. Combined with the 3-2 victory at the end of May, the Cowboys had put together seven consecutive wins and quickly established themselves as a serious contender.
It was exactly the type of response Alpine needed after the disappointment of 2016.
The season was not without adversity. After the hot start to June, the Cowboys went through a difficult stretch that included losses of 13-5, 9-8, 7-6 and 25-10. Alpine's pitching was tested, and the offense was occasionally forced into games where even scoring double-digit runs was not enough.
Prott's team repeatedly demonstrated an ability to respond to those stretches.
After the 25-10 loss, Alpine came back with a 17-11 victory. The Cowboys later won 18-12 and followed two consecutive losses with victories of 9-4 and 6-5. The pattern was important. Alpine was no longer allowing a difficult week to become a lost month.
Late June provided another example. The Cowboys lost three consecutive games by scores of 13-6, 14-13 and 7-6. Instead of allowing the losing streak to continue, Alpine responded with a 13-7 victory and then went on the road and won four consecutive games, 6-2, 6-2, 10-8 and 27-10.
The 27-run performance was one of the biggest offensive explosions of the season and illustrated just how dangerous Alpine's lineup could become when everything was working.
The Cowboys carried that momentum into July.
Alpine opened the month with four consecutive victories, winning 8-4, 6-2, 12-6 and 9-8. After a loss, the Cowboys won another one-run game, 5-4. Two nights later, they earned an 8-6 victory.
By that point, it was becoming clear that the 2017 Cowboys were substantially different from the team that had struggled to find consistency the previous summer.
The strongest stretch of the season came in the middle of July.
Beginning July 12, Alpine won five consecutive road games. The Cowboys opened the run with a 7-0 shutout and followed with victories of 8-2, 14-4, 14-6 and 8-4. During those five games, Alpine outscored its opponents 51-16.
That stretch showed that Prott's team could do more than simply win offensive shootouts. The Cowboys recorded a shutout, held opponents to two and four runs in other games and combined those pitching performances with an offense capable of scoring 14 runs on consecutive nights.
After a narrow 8-7 loss, Alpine returned home and swept a doubleheader on July 19, winning 3-0 and 7-3. The 3-0 victory was another example of the Cowboys' ability to win a low-scoring game when necessary.
The final weeks of July became a push toward the postseason.
Alpine lost 7-5 before responding with a 15-6 victory. After a wild 17-15 loss, the Cowboys won 12-4 and returned home to win 11-6. Alpine then swept another doubleheader with victories of 7-0 and 8-7 before winning 11-5 the following night.
By late July, the transformation from the previous season was complete.
The Cowboys were back in the playoffs.
Alpine's regular-season schedule produced 42 victories against 19 losses in games recorded with decisions, a dramatic improvement from the 32-34 record of the previous season. Prott had taken over a club that missed the postseason and, in his first year as manager, immediately restored Alpine to its familiar position as one of the Pecos League's contenders.
The improvement was not simply a matter of winning more games. The Cowboys had regained the identity that had defined the franchise during the first years of the Pecos League. They were difficult to beat at Kokernot Field, capable of winning on the road and resilient enough to respond when the season turned against them.
August brought playoff baseball back to Alpine.
The postseason began on August 3 with a dramatic one-run game. Alpine lost 7-6, immediately putting the Cowboys in a difficult position. One year after missing the playoffs entirely, their return to the postseason was suddenly one loss away from ending.
The Cowboys responded emphatically in Game 2.
Alpine won 8-1 on August 4, forcing a deciding third game at Kokernot Field. The victory was one of the most convincing performances of the series and gave the Cowboys an opportunity to advance with one more win.
But the deciding game did not go Alpine's way.
The Cowboys lost 9-1 on August 5, ending Austin Prott's first season as manager.
The playoff elimination was disappointing, particularly after the dramatic improvement Alpine had made during the regular season. The Cowboys had spent the summer reestablishing themselves as one of the stronger teams in the league, only to have the season come down to one deciding game.
But the significance of the 2017 season extended beyond the playoff result.
A year earlier, Alpine had experienced its first losing season of the Pecos League era. The Cowboys had gone 32-34 and missed the postseason after qualifying in each of the league's first five seasons. Questions naturally followed about whether the franchise's early run of success was beginning to fade.
Austin Prott answered those questions quickly.
In his first season as manager, the Cowboys returned to winning baseball and returned to the playoffs. Alpine produced extended winning streaks, dominated stretches of its road schedule and once again made Kokernot Field the site of meaningful postseason baseball.
The season also represented an important transition in the history of the organization. Prott had gone from being one of the players who helped Alpine reach the 2014 Pecos League Championship Series to being the person responsible for managing the team. He understood the expectations surrounding the Cowboys because he had experienced them himself as a player.
In Alpine, simply fielding a team was never going to be enough.
The Cowboys expected to win.
The 2017 season restored that expectation.
There were plenty of wild Pecos League nights along the way. Alpine won games 16-15, 10-9, 19-2, 18-5, 15-13, 18-12, 27-10, 14-4, 14-6 and 15-6. The Cowboys also showed another side of their team with victories of 3-2, 4-1, 2-1, 6-2, 7-0, 3-0 and 7-0.
That ability to win in different ways was one of the clearest differences from the previous season.
The ending prevented 2017 from becoming a championship season, but it was unquestionably a turnaround season.
The Cowboys were back.
Austin Prott's first season as manager restored Alpine to the postseason and began a new era at Kokernot Field. After the disappointment of 2016, the 2017 Cowboys again gave Alpine meaningful baseball into August.
The season ended sooner than the Cowboys wanted, with a 9-1 loss in the deciding game of a three-game playoff series, but the larger direction of the organization had changed dramatically.
In 2016, Alpine had missed the playoffs for the first time.
In 2017, Austin Prott brought them back.
For the Alpine Cowboys, that made Prott's first season as manager an important turning point and the beginning of a new chapter in the history of professional baseball at Kokernot Field.
