Sweating the small stuff

Yesterday we evened our record at 2-2 with a 16-3 victory over John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a school from New York City.  It was one of those games in which we clearly were physically a better team than our opponent was.

I have to give the John Jay coaching staff and players a lot of credit, though.  Their players hustled from the time they got to the field to the time that they left.  They were respectful of the game, their opponents, and the umpires.  They were disciplined and they seemed to genuinely enjoy playing the game of baseball.

What a game like that does for us is a couple things.  First, it gives us an opportunity to get some additional position players in the game and give some younger guys a taste of game experience.  Second, as the game progressed, it allowed our players to execute without the fear that a mistake might cost the team a victory.

Being the pitching coach, most of my focus is on executing the game plan and trying to get our pitchers to get ahead of the hitters by throwing strikes, and especially by throwing first pitch strikes.  We use three guys who hadn't made an appearance yet, but who all are deserving of more opportunities.  Out of 150 pitches in the nine inning game, we threw 138 fastballs.  We had four walks in the nine inning game, which is one more than our goal per nine innings.  That is something we still need to be better at doing.  Even with some of the batters who did not walk, we got behind in the count more than what we want to do.  We went to 3-ball counts on nine batters total and threw first pitch strikes to only 19 out of 34 batters.

As a coaching staff, what you want to do after a game like this is to be happy for the win but not allow the players to think they are better than they are.  We want them to believe in themselves, but also to be able to evaluate their performance(s) not just based on the scoreboard, but on some of the little things.

One of the sayings I have been using with the pitchers this year is to 'sweat the small stuff'.  Even though I generally don't want to sweat the small stuff when it comes to daily living, I have tried to get the pitchers to sweat the small stuff during practices, drills, and conditioning.  I want them to practice the right way so that it becomes habit and helps them to execute more consistently during games.  Therefore, our pitching charts can show us if we are doing things well, if we are achieving some of our smaller goals that are going to help us achieve the bigger goals.

We are making progress, and we are trying to develop an entire pitching staff.  I discuss the pitchers more than the position players because those are the guys I spend every practice with, and those are the players I am fortunate enough to work with and set goals with during the pre-season, during each game, and throughout the entire season.

Did we pitch good enough yesterday to shut down a good team?  Perhaps, depending on many other factors, but we can still get better.  It was definitely a day that good things happened, and our team can build on the successes of those three pitchers and the execution of the hitters who squared up some pitches and drove the ball into the gaps!  On to today's game against Ferrum College.