Game: Marlins vs Braves

Before the Game
So I go over to Steve’s house and we agree that Avi should be our first pitcher. We had no sooner agreed to this then Steve’s phone rings and he looks at the caller ID and goes “uh-oh”. Long story short, Avi is going to be about a half hour late to the game. We can deal with this and so he gets the nod for the sixth. We end up deciding to start Trey, but also decide we want to see a lot of different pitchers and so we only pitch each of our pitchers for an inning. The pitchers we want to see are:
Trey, Everett, Avi, and Percy

Percy, if you recall, had a disastrous outing. However, he’s been throwing very well in “bullpen” sessions so I want to see how he does in a game. We put in Jim in for the 5th figuring he had a bad outing the last time and would still be able to come in for relief if Percy can’t get the ball over.

We don’t expect to get past the 5th, with the exception of our first game we haven’t gotten past the 5th and it’s cold, with a chance to rain, further decreasing the chance we’d get past the 4th, let alone 5th. Not to mention we expect the other team to be scoring runs. With all that in mind, we decide to go ahead and schedule Bobby to pitch, since he’s looked pretty good, and have Brendan catch him. We need to start developing Brendan and so we figure this would be a good way to say that he’s going to get some chances without actually having to worry about him catching. It also gives Steve an excuse to work with him before the game.

Steve and I decide to start keeping track of who is showing up the requested 20 minutes before the game. We’ll then have them do something not too onerous, but enough to get our message across such as run laps. Today, Brendan is the surprise first arrival, with Everett & Fuller there shortly after. With Jesse and Avi excused it still leaves an awful lot of late people, though all are there 10 minutes before the game, except Avi, as expected.

I work with Bobby and Percy before the game and they both look ok but not great. We’ll see how it goes. Steve does his work with Brendan and he looks not so great.

The Game
We’re the home team. Trey comes up and takes care of business on 9 pitches with 1 strikeout. Meanwhile, the bottom of our lineup doesn’t get anything going, except for Kellen getting a single and a couple of steals.

Everett, as usual has a rough time of it. Jesse, who was sitting out, even comments that he throws good pitches so it’s kind of surprising that they hit him as much as they do. I think we need to work on his pitching rather then throwing. He’s pretty good about getting ahead in the count, which makes it all the more frustrating. He allows 2 runs and we get out of the inning without more damage after we double up a player on a popup. Now it happens to be against the heart of their order, so it’s not the worse thing, but still isn’t great.

In the bottom half of the inning, things don’t look so good when Trey and Everett both fly out on well hit balls. But then Brendan gets on base and steals 2nd. Jesse rips a ball, which was over his head, into left for a run scoring single. After stealing second, he then scores when Percy hits a triple. Bobby follows it up with a double to score Percy and we end up with 3 runs, all produced after we had 2 outs, after Fuller grounds out to end the inning. It was pretty nice. And the great thing is that pretty much everything was legitimate. It wasn’t like Percy got lucky with the triple, he really deserved it. Score is 3-2 good guys and we are definitely in a game we didn’t think we would be.

Avi then pitches the top of the 3rd. He walks the first batter and gets the next one to line out. The 3rd batter rips a ball into center that gets by the outstretched hand of Jodi. Trey runs over from right and relays it to Jodi who then tries, against what Steve and I were saying, to throw the runner out at 3rd. She naturally overthrows and the run scores. However, the batter never gets a chance to score as we retire the side while holding him at 3rd.

In the bottom of the 3rd, Ethan, of all people, gets a nice one out single and then scores, when Kellen, of all people, hits a double. Kellen steals 3rd and then scores when Jodi hits one back to the mound. Jim walks, steals second and then tries to steal third but comes up short of the bag on his slide and gets tagged out. Ending the inning.

At this point we’re moving fairly quickly in his game and it’s starting to drizzle. It’s a little early for the predicted rain, which considering the fact that we’re ahead is a shame. Anyhow Percy, the first of our real tests, is up on the mound. After I threw with him I had him throw to Jesse and both insist that Percy has a nasty slider. However, when he tries to show me it keeps rising instead, so I tell him to stick with fastballs. Worse yet he starts off facing the heart of their order. Sure enough their slugger hits a solid single. On the next play we get him out on a fielders choice. Overall Percy looks good and while that runner on the fielder’s choice ends up scoring after a single and a putout at first, he only lets up the 1 run. I was pretty sure that the first appearance was a fluke and this seems to bear that out. Going into the bottom of the 4th it’s 5-5

As we start off the inning, Trey confides in me that he hates leading off. I think this fits in my overall picture of Trey as someone who puts a lot of pressure on himself (as does dad) and one of the times he feels this pressure is leading off. Obviously there’s nothing we can do about it at this point, but it’s an important thing to realize for the playoffs when we do have flexibility over the batting order. Anyhow, Trey gets an infield single. He then steals second on the first pitch. Before the inning, I had told Everett that if Trey got out that I wanted to see him bunt. He told me that he doesn’t really feel comfortable bunting as he doesn’t practice. I told him I understood that, but to consider it in-game practice and also assured him we’d be working on it as a team. When the count becomes 1-0 after the passed ball with Trey advancing, I tell him to do what we had talked about. He squares around a couple times but can’t get contact. The second time was a ball. After the inning I tell him one of the reasons I want him to practice bunting is he knows where the strike zone is and so he shouldn’t be bunting at balls. Anyhow he gets behind 1-2 and ends up striking out. Trey does manage to steal third during Brendan’s at bat when he walks. This gives us runners at first and third. I tell Brendan on the first pitch he should steal. For whatever reason their catcher throws down to the base. The ball goes into center and Trey scores without a problem. On the very next pitch Brendan steals third. Jesse then hits ANOTHER ball that was way to high and bloops it for a single, though Brendan had to hold up as it was on the third base side. I tell Jesse to steal on the first pitch, as we have the 1st and 3rd situation again, but on the first pitch Percy hits a single advancing Jesse to third. I tell Percy he should then steal. And he does and gets a good jump. Yet AGAIN the catcher throws, though his throw is on time this time and in a close play Percy is called out. However, Brendan does score giving us a run for an out. Later in the game their coach confides in me that he can’t believe his catcher threw down the second time and let us have another run. Bobby grounds out to second to end the inning, but putting us up 8-5.

Now we’re in the 5th. There is still 25 minutes left before the mandatory stop time of an hour and a half. I hope for a LONG inning as I do not want to have to throw Bobby. Jim is once again having clear control problems. He walks the first batter. The second one grounds out to short, he then walks the third batter. Both score on a double, where we once AGAIN overthrow 3rd. Their slugger gets another great hit and drives in the guy who was on second scores on a close play at the plate. The guy however overruns 3rd and Everett makes a dead on throw to Avi who applies the tag and we get the out. Now was the guy really out? I don’t think so, neither does Steve, or the other coach. But as the other coach said even if he wasn’t out it was the right call to make as kids shouldn’t be overrunning third. Despite the 3 runs that scored when we get that out it was a clear momentum shift and Jim strikes out the next batter. Overall, Jim did not have great stuff, but neither did he fall apart on the mound. He kept his cool and got us through the inning. It’s now tied. Out bottom of the order acts like the bottom of the order as they bring in their ace pitcher, and we strike out 1-2-3.

As we were are coming in from the field I say to Steve that Brendan shouldn’t catch in the inning and we should use Jesse instead. He agrees. Steve goes over and explains to Brendan that since we’re in a close game and Jesse has “more experience” (which I thought was an excellent way of phrasing it) that we were going to have him catch. Brendan takes this well. All of this is karma for our pitching a pitcher who we didn’t want to pitch. Anyhow Bobby gets up and walks the first batter. On four pitches. Steve turns to me and says “I want to keep him on a short leash.” I ask him “Who can we sub for him?” The answer is nobody. Our choices at his point would be Kellen or Jodi, neither of which is appealing and Bobby almost for sure has better stuff then both of them. He starts to pitch better but does allow a run to score. We end out getting a man out at third on a caught steal and Bobby had a nice inning. Overall, Bobby got better the more he threw which was great and just what we needed.

As we head out into the field I hope that their ace will not be on the mound again. He is. However, we have the top of our order up. Jim gets permission to bunt. He then lays down a great bunt… if he was trying to sacrifice. Unfortunately, bunting right back at a travel team pitcher with no one on base does us no good. Still, I’m glad we tried it. Trey, with no doubt a good deal of self imposed pressure, strikes out. This gives us 2 outs. Everett gets a nice single. I give him the green light to take off and he goes on the second pitch. Alas, Brendan reverts to form and strikes out ending the game with a 9-8 loss.

Post Game Analysis and Looking Forward
Well the good news is that we didn’t allow any big innings. The most they scored in an inning was 3, which is good. Our fielding was terrific. We were hitting the ball hard and having multiple people score. Percy and Bobby both had good outings, Jim, not as much.

During the post game speech Steve said if they think about where they were at during the first game and where we’re at now it’s a huge improvement. Bobby, little wise guy that he is, says “So you’re saying we used to be crap?” which draws a large chuckle from the parents. I mean that is what Steve is saying, but still. If you all could see the progress they’d made you would agree that we’re improving far more then most teams. It’s a shame we don’t get the victory here, but unlike last game where I think there were some decisions which could have given us the runs we lost by, in this game we were right in it, and got shut down by their ace pitcher when we threw 6 pitchers.

The good thing is that it has given us enough confidence that we’re going to try and not pitch Trey next game, or to save him for a relief situation. If we can keep getting good outings from six kids we’ll be in great shape come the playoffs. It’s frustrating that we haven’t had practice in so long, especially as they are forecasting rain again for Wednesday, but we’re looking good, especially as we play a team that I was not impressed with when we scouted. So once again the future is looking great even if the individual result was not as much.

We had the kids, after our short speech, do the “name something good you saw” and they all have no problems naming 11 different things. We awarded Percy the ball for a great day at bat, a nice inning on the mound, and a heads-up play as a RF when he backed up Trey on a play that Trey blew at 1st.

So I pretty hopeful that when I write the next game recap on Tuesday or Wednesday I am talking about a win.