Game vs. Yankees

Another day another victory. The most remarkable thing about today’s game was the fact that it was a shut-out. A shut-out in little league around here is truly a rarity. Now really a lot of that was luck. In the second inning Alec could not get the ball across the plate to save his life. However, the other team ran on passed balls and we got two outs at the plate that way. Alec didn’t really deserve any outs based on his pitching. He threw 17 pitches with not one recorded strike, though two balls were hit into play. The inning could have been disastrous. After he walked to load the bases, for the third time in the inning, I pulled him. Jeremy Ma came in and struck out the worst player on their team to end the inning and preserve our shutout.

But then again to record a shutout you’ll need some luck. So besides the two plays at the plate to limit runs, we also had other good fortune. For instance, with Jared on the mound the first batter of the 4th inning, their cleanup hitter hits a hard hit ball to between second and first. Nick ranges far off the bag to get it, however Jared never made any effort to go to first. Nick won’t win a footrace to the bag, however he won’t have to as Matt S makes the play with ease. Sometimes, as Napoleon was rumored to have said, it’s better to be lucky than good.

Not that it was all luck. No pitcher, including Jeremy Ma who threw 1 1/3 threw more than 21 pitches. They only had 9 base runners, which includes 5 from Alec. In other words Jeremy Me, in his second consecutive start, Jeremy Ma and Jared all threw incredibly well. This sort of lights out pitching bodes very well for our play-off chances, especially if we can find a 6th friggin pitcher.

In reality they could have easily broken through the shut-out. They were the home team and when we went up by 9 in the top half of the 5th, pressing up against the time limit, I figured they’d still want to bat. However, their coach called it quits. Which is too bad as I was going to throw Noff, considering that we need another pitcher for the play-offs and Alec blew his audition tonight. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to give their team one last at bat, but I guess they felt truly down after a drubbing.

The real problem for them was that their pitchers couldn’t find the strike zone with a laser guided missile. We had 12 walks tonight. Combined with some aggressive base running, a couple of key hits, and we get to 9 runs. It was truly a team effort as 8 of our 12 players scored a run and everyone, except our team leading hitter Cameron, reached base safely (and on their own merits).

There are of course other positives to mention but I won’t go on.

However, tonight didn’t really get us any closer to figuring out the playoff puzzle. Alec might get a chance on Saturday to redeem himself, but I don’t know. Jared shows signs that he could pitch two innings. However, if we’re pitching him two we can’t really catch him three, more like one. That MIGHT be doable if Sean can catch for us. We laid it on the line with him tonight and explained that there is the focused and unfocused Sean. Yesterday we got the focused Sean. We got that again tonight.

The thing is we’re blessed with a surplus of talent. We have no less than three kids, Jeremy Me, Jeremy Ma, and Jared we can comfortably throw behind the plate. Of course the problem is that those are three of our best pitchers right there, which adds to their wear and tear. There has to be a solution to our jigsaw problem, I just haven’t discovered it yet. There’s still time, and if Sean can keep being focused that would certainly help somewhat, but really the issue is we need just one more pitcher. So who’s it going to be?