The Chattanooga Lookouts began this season with three of the top-50 prospects in all of minor league baseball.
Now they have none.
This week's promotions of third baseman Miguel Sano to Minnesota and pitcher Jose Berrios to Triple-A Rochester (N.Y.) followed last month's big-league arrival for center fielder Byron Buxton. That represents a mission accomplished for Lookouts manager Doug Mientkiewicz, hitting coach Chad Allen and pitching coach Stu Cliburn in terms of player development, but there is this matter of the second half of the Southern League season.
"We're going to attack this a little differently than we did at the beginning," Mientkiewicz said. "We're going to have less power, obviously, and we're going to have to do some things to manufacture runs. But our thought of expecting to win every game is not going to change, and I think our guys understand that.
"This group has seen numerous guys moved up or down before."
Chattanooga was scheduled to play a pair of seven-inning games Thursday against Birmingham at AT&T Field following Wednesday night's postponement of the series opener, but those were scratched by wet conditions as well. The Lookouts and Barons are scheduled to play two seven-inning games today, weather permitting, with the opener beginning at 5:15 p.m.
Fireworks are scheduled to follow the second game.
The Lookouts still have Max Kepler and Adam Walker, who share responsibilities at first base and in left field. Kepler leads the Southern League with a .346 batting average, while Walker has a league-leading 23 home runs and has tallied 67 RBIs in 71 games.
Still sidelined is first baseman Dalton Hicks, who went on the disabled list May 20 with a strained upper back. Hicks was hitting .289 with three home runs and 14 RBIs in 23 games.
"Losing Hicks is killing us right now," Mientkiewicz said. "He's been one guy I've really leaned on these last two years."
Sano was surging at the time of his promotion, hitting .588 last week, and he helped Chattanooga ascend to the top of the league in hitting. The first-half North Division champions remain mired in ninth among the league's 10 teams in pitching, and their standing may not improve with Berrios no longer around.
Berrios was 8-3 with a 3.08 ERA in 15 starts.
The Lookouts had a four-game stretch in the middle of June when they allowed just four runs to Birmingham. They opened the second half last weekend by losing four of five games in Montgomery, yielding 39 runs.
"We weren't very good at all," Mientkiewicz said. "We didn't pitch, and we didn't play defense. We had awful at-bats. You always tend to have a little bit of a hangover after the all-star break, but at the end of the day, if we don't pitch well, we're not going to win.
"When guys keep getting sent up, the complexion of your team changes, and it takes a while for the guys who are filling in to figure out what's going on. You don't know right off what kind of club you're going to have, and we're kind of going through that right now."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.