TROY — Carson Maxwell couldn’t pinpoint the date, but he could zero in on the moment when it felt like the Tri-City ValleyCats went from feeling like a collection of individual players to an actual, honest-to-goodness team.
“It was a home game, for sure,” the ValleyCats’ outfielder said prior to Tuesday’s opener of a three-game series against the Washington Wild Things at Joe Bruno Stadium. “We won by three or four, and it just kind of felt like something shifted.”
What shifted, exactly?
According to Maxwell, it was the ValleyCats’ entire mentality. After a calamitous start to the team’s inaugural season in the independent Frontier League, the club has turned the corner.
It’s a season that can, thus far, be pretty neatly split into two halves. The first half was a serious struggle, a 4-15 mark through 19 games that included an early seven-game losing streak and another stretch of seven losses in eight games. The second has been much better, with the…