Savvy Baseball Observations, Volume 9

(#117)

Great start on the mound today; a 5 pitch first inning. The goal: Short defensive innings, long offensive innings.

I saw a player hit for the cycle today. Double, triple, home run and single. Usually it’s a triple that’s needed to hit for the cycle; it’s probably the hardest one to get.

A ground ball was hit up the middle for a sure single, but hit second base, went directly to the shortstop for a 6-3 ground out.

I kept “thinking” advice to the hitters who were on a steady diet of off-speed pitches they saw today for probably the only time this season: Be patient. Get a good pitch to hit. “This is a recording.”

Umpires should receive hazard pay in addition to the nice fee they receive because just about every close call they make is griped about from one side of the field or the other.

The pace of both games moved quickly today.

I saw our big lefty taking a deep breath and then releasing it just before delivering the pitch. It seemed to have a calming effect. He pitched into the sixth today and picked up a win.

Fun to see a pitcher who hasn’t pitched much in a while take advantage of the opportunity and pitch a complete game (6 innings) four-hit shutout with one walk and nine K’s. We’ll need that effectiveness in future games.

Lots of great plays by the third baseman today.

I was remembering when we used to play the theme from the movie Rocky on the PA system to fire up our team, until I realized that the same song was also a favorite of the opposing pitcher. It fired him up, too. I thought if we could play some Sinatra tunes and learn to get fired up by them and the other team would hate it and be distracted. It didn’t work. They all hated it. Now it’s just rap music I’ve never heard.

I saw what ended up be a 5-5-5-3 play and the runner, who thought it was going to be a routine play, jogged down the line and then sat out the rest of the game. His replacement. drove in a key run in the bottom of the 6th. Rule: When you make contact (any kind of contact) you become a sprinter; always. (A 5-5-5-3 play is a ball that bounces off the glove of the third baseman, who picks it up, drops it, picks it up again, drops it again, then picks it up yet again and throws the runner out at first).

I saw a very rare 3 pitch inning; 3 pitches, three groundouts. That half inning lasted less than a minute and a half. Back to the dugout and back on offense. The three one pitch outs are also known as “one pitch strikeouts.”

One pitcher threw a clutch 3-2 slider to get us out of a jam in the top of the 6th.

Four home runs for us today. One off the roof of the hitting complex behind the left field fence, one over the roof of the hitting complex, one to the gap in right center field over the Chad Bradford #12 sign, and one just to right of the scoreboard in the left field gap. All timely home runs. We now have three hitters with double-digit home runs.

Someone said one of our hitters with 11 home runs was going to break the season record for home runs if he hit 14. I said that he probably would not break the record, since Lee Toney holds the record with 25 home runs for the Eagles in 1982. PS- I hope he does break Lee’s record. It would really help our team in the last week of the regular season and in the post season, but he has a long way to go.

Watching a baseball game is sometimes an aerobic exercise. Exhausting. Coaching baseball games, too. Perhaps that why my hair has been white for so many years. It’s turned white, but not loose… yet.

I said “play pepper” to a hitter with a two-strike count and immediately realized that the hitter had no idea what pepper was or what “play pepper” meant.

If a pitcher is asked to go get one hitter out to help his team win, then that is just exactly what he should do. Everybody is a piece of the winning puzzle. Sometimes the shortest roles become the biggest roles. We are just subtracting from 21. Do the math.

The closer started the seventh with a high fastball that became a solo home run to cut our lead to one run. The next nine pitches were unhittable sliders perfectly located which made three hitters look very bad. I love it! A win for the starter, a hold for the first reliever who “saved” the sixth, a save for the closer and most importantly, a win and a sweep for the team.

I saw a pitcher in a college game on TV who gave up three consecutive solo home runs in the first inning and another one leading off the second inning. He shut the other team down after that and continued to compete until he ran the pitch count over 100 pitches after five innings and left the game. His team rallied for the win, both game and series. Most pitchers would be so shell-shocked and embarrassed that they would be begging someone to take them out of the game. His demeanor, body language, and focus never changed. He kept competing, just like they all are supposed to do. It was a tremendous display of the big four…. confidence, motivation, and determination; head, heart, balls. Toughness! It was fun to watch and I’m going to watch him every Friday night for the rest of the season.

Until Volume 10.