Practice Report

Wednesday May 24

We had practice yesterday. Steve has the scorebook and such so I don’t have the reminder of exactly how things went down to do Tuesday’s game. So look for that this weekend when he’ll be back in the ‘burbs and I can pick it up from him.

It was just a beautiful day. It really stormed for about 20 minutes around 10 AM but by the time our practice started at 5:45 it was just beautiful baseball weather. Anyhow, even before the game started yesterday Steve and I agreed we’d like to do an extended scrimmage with the Cardinals. Based on the way the game ended, we felt this to still be a very good idea.

The good news is that our team is getting much better about being punctual. Yesterday only a couple of people were “late” (arriving closer then 15 minutes to the game) and today only Percy and Jesse were late, with Jodi, Jim, and Avi not being there. This was noticeable as we had 6 players there before they had 2 players there.

Anyhow, I went and talked to the other coach and we figured out how we would do the scrimmage. Basically we agreed to do 3 outs (rather then everyone bats) cap an inning at 5 runs, or everybody batting, and do coach’s pitching. This guy is sort of your typical sports dad. He was nothing but nice to me, the players on his team, and the players on our team even but towards his own son? Bit of a jerk. Which makes it not so surprising that the son was a bit of a jerk.

Anyhow so after we debriefed quickly from yesterday’s game, we went out and scrimmaged. Overall the scrimmage went well. The players had fun, except for Jesse who was in an exceedingly bad mood. Everett and Trey both rocketed the ball which was good for them since they’ve been in a slump. Ethan had 2 great at bats that I saw. The first was a beautiful bunt and the second was a screamer down the left field line, that if he hadn’t watched it as it went would have been a triple, but instead was “only” a double. Not a whole lot that was notable otherwise. Percy seems to be quite frustrated with himself at bat and didn’t really get good contact on any of his pitches.

That was basically, it from a fun, light practice. With the playoffs just around the corner things will get more serious again, soon. After our long email to Libby about communication does she get back to us? Nope. Furthermore, the playoff schedule is out and do Steve and I have a copy? Not exactly. So we’re going to email Libby about that today and simultaneously get ready to go to her boss about the issues we’ve been having.

Looking forward

We have 3 games left and so it’s time to use our 1 reorder to adjust the batting order. We will be doing this prior to our next game. I really am torn about several things. For instance do we keep Jim at the top of the order? He can set the table OK, but would it be better to move up Bobby who has better speed and makes more contact? Of course Bobby makes better contact so maybe we save him until later in the order? Jesse should clearly be moved up to 3rd or 4th. What to do with a slumping Everett and Trey? Where to bat Kelvin who gets on base consistently but can’t hit the ball to save his life? The questions go on and on. Fortunately, while we use this reorder to get ready for the playoffs, in the playoffs the continuous batting order is dropped and we can change the order for each game, so if Ethan, for instance, finally puts it together and starts hitting the ball fair and hard, we can move him up in the order, especially with his speed.

Hitting is our one remaining Achilles heel. The Cardinal’s coach told me after the game that we fielded as well as any team he’s seen this season, and I agree we fielded the game extremely well. As well we should since that’s been such a heavy focus for us. That leaves hitting as our last hurdle. I think we’ll pretty much be concentrating on this from now until the end of the season and if we can hit it even just a BIT better could really take teams by surprise in the playoffs.

No game on Saturday due to Memorial day weekend, but look for an update with a recap of Tuesday’s game.