The Chattanooga Lookouts are not going to successfully defend their 2015 Southern League championship, but they gave it a good run.
Chattanooga followed up a 36-34 first half to this season with a 39-31 second half for a 75-65 overall record. The Lookouts finished well back of Jackson in the first-half race and just back of Montgomery in the second half, and their overall record is the best in franchise history without a playoff berth to show for it.
"We got in a position to where we were playing meaningful games," Lookouts second-year manager Doug Mientkiewicz said. "We had a lot of series where we won three out of five, but we didn't get to four enough against the teams we should have gotten to four against. Just trying to get them to play all five games was challenging at times."
The Lookouts finished third in the league in hitting (.257) and fifth in team ERA (3.60), and they had two outfielders - Daniel Palka and Zack Granite - named to the league's season-ending all-star team. Palka was leading the league with 21 home runs before he was promoted to Triple-A Rochester (N.Y.) on July 7, while Granite played all season with the Lookouts and led the league in hits (155) and stolen bases (56) while finishing third with a .295 batting average.
Infielder Niko Goodrum on Tuesday was the Southern League's final player of the week, collecting 15 hits in his final 30 at-bats with six extra-base hits.
Chattanooga also finished with the league's hottest pitcher, left-hander Stephen Gonsalves. The 6-foot-5, 213-pounder from San Marcos, Calif., made 13 starts after a promotion from the high Single-A Florida State League and went 8-1 with a 1.82 earned run average.
Gonsalves had 89 strikeouts in 74 innings.
"I've been really comfortable with my off-speed pitches instead of being just that straight fastball pitcher that I've been in my prior years, which got me beat up a little bit in the Florida State League," Gonsalves said. "Having confidence in my off-speed pitches has given me the ability to pitch well here."
A fourth-round pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2013, Gonsalves began this season as a top-10 organizational prospect and delivered. He was named Minor League Baseball's Southern League player of the month for August, when he won four games and allowed one earned run in 33 innings.
If Gonsalves opens next spring with the Lookouts, they could match or surpass their 15-7 close to this season.
"His breaking ball still needs improvement, and we have to work on the good pitch, bad pitch, good pitch, bad pitch," Mientkiewicz said. "We're learning a lot about our guys who have struggled up there, with Jose Berrios coming to mind. The good pitch, bad pitch, good pitch, bad pitch gets exposed quickly in the big leagues, and we're trying to create it to where when we send a kid up, he doesn't come back.
"It's a hard dynamic to develop, because until they see it, they don't grasp it 100 percent, but he's got a good head on his shoulders and knows what he's doing. He understands he's got a lot of room to get better before he's a finished product. I had to remember sometimes that he's just turned 22 and that he's in Double-A for the first time. We're pretty pleased with what he did."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.