LAKEWOOD, N.J. — It was the sixth inning and the Lakewood BlueClaws had ridden a bus overnight for more than six hours just to face another four-run deficit. So when Luis García clobbered a three-run homer over the scoreboard at First National Bank Field in Greensboro, N.C., he was excited. It was July 4. Forget that the 18-year-old prospect was hitting .199 and that he had never experienced prolonged failure like this. Forget that it was the sixth inning.



He pimped it.



“If I hit a ball like that,” Mike Micucci said, “I might have done the same thing.”



But Low-A Lakewood’s first-year manager saw this as another moment. He oversees the second-youngest full-season affiliate in all of minor-league baseball — only the Fort Wayne TinCaps, San Diego’s Low-A team, are younger — and this season has been a never-ending lesson in how to compartmentalize failure. The average age of Lakewood’s hitters, as...