The climb to the peak

Now that we have the first two MIAA series under our belts, we have opportunities to continue to evaluate how we are pitching and try to tweak some things so that we can gradually make improvements during the season.  One goal that we occasionally talk about is that the season isn’t a sprint, and that we want to get better every day and thus be playing our best baseball in May when we get nearer to the post-season.

This year will be a first for us in the MIAA, as there will be a four team, double elimination tournament after the regular season ends.  For us at Adrian, having won the regular season championship the last few years and thus qualifying for the NCAA DIII Regionals, we now have to prove our mettle in the MIAA Tournament if we want to assure ourselves a spot in the Regionals.  I like the idea of a conference tournament, as there will now be very meaningful games (with post-season implications) played for everyone throughout the entire conference schedule.

With the idea that we will likely play again against our conference opponents in the MIAA Tournament, becoming familiar with their strengths and weaknesses is a given, but even more important than understanding the tendencies of our opponents is to get better at the things we do.

Some of the things we have discussed as a pitching staff in the last couple of weeks are things we have made improvements in.  As a staff in general, we are doing a better job of throwing to the bottom of the strike zone.  It is still important to make progress in that area, especially when there are runners on base. A location mistake up in the strike zone can lead to a run or two allowed, and in a conference that so far in 2012 has been littered with low scoring games, the fewer times we make mistakes up in the strike zone the better chance we have of putting zeros on the scoreboard for our opponents.

One of the points of emphasis for the next couple of weeks now are to continue to be aggressive in the strike zone early in the count.  We have only walked nine batters in our first eight league games, and one reason for that is that we have done a pretty good job of getting ahead of hitters early in the count.  When we get ahead in the count, it becomes easier to force the hitters to expand the hitting zone and make them hit pitchers’ pitches, thus hopefully hitting more balls away from the barrel of the bat.

In addition, we are trying to do a better job of attacking the opponent’s running game, not only by utilizing our pickoffs, but also by working on having quicker feet, more accurate throws, and disrupting the timing of the good, aggressive base runners.

After 18 games, we are nearly half way through our regular season schedule and over a quarter of the way through our conference schedule.  That means that we are really not even half way through with our climb to becoming as good as we can become in 2012.  Every season has high points and low points, and as we develop as a team we can improve the definition of what playing our best really means.  We haven’t yet come close to reaching our peak, but we are on our way there.